- Development of a sovereign AI assistant based on open source language models specifically for council members, hosted on Swiss infrastructure.
- Ensuring data protection and confidentiality to prevent the leakage of sensitive information to foreign platforms.
- Avoidance of external dependencies and bias through a nationally coordinated solution, aligned with democratic values and parliamentary needs.
Submitted text
The Office of the National Council is instructed, to have an artificial intelligence assistant developed especially for the members of the Federal Assembly. This tool is to be based on an open source language model that is tailored to the needs of the legislature and linked to the relevant federal databases. The AI assistant is to be hosted on a sovereign Swiss infrastructure in order to guarantee confidentiality and ensure the independence of responses from foreign influences.
Minority
A minority of the committee (Schnyder Markus, Addor, Golay Roger, Graber Michael, Götte, Hurter Thomas, Knutti, Tuena, Zuberbühler) requested that the motion be rejected.
Justification
Artificial intelligence (AI) is making rapid progress and is becoming a key factor in many areas – including parliamentary work. indispensable tool. Several Council members already use AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Claudeto analyze texts, prepare proposals or summarize documents. Although these tools are useful, the following three main challenges arise when using them:
- There is a risk that sensitive information will be disclosed to secure framework of the federal government and become public.
- There is a risk that the answers from tools with a “Bias”, a prioritization or a logic that runs counter to Swiss interests.
- There is a Structural dependency of technologies developed outside the Swiss institutional and legal framework.
To meet these challenges, Switzerland must offer a sovereign and efficient alternative: a AI assistant specially designed for the Council memberswhich is hosted on servers in Switzerland, is based on Swiss democratic values and is linked to the documentation resources relevant to the mandate of the Council members. This assistant could provide useful and targeted functions, such as summarizing draft legislation, helping to draft texts, comparing similar texts or initiatives, and supporting issue monitoring.
Such a tool could not only increase the efficiency of parliamentary work, but also ensure the digital sovereignty of parliament by preventing the exchange of sensitive data via foreign platforms. For the legislature, it is a fundamental question of security and independence.
The Parliamentary Library has already launched a corresponding pilot project and several federal units are also testing AI solutions that are tailored to their needs. It is imperative that these efforts are coordinated. It is time for the country’s highest democratic authority to also have a tool that lives up to its responsibilities and not have to make do with GovChat, which is intended for the administration.
Countries such as Italy have already taken this path. Switzerland must no longer be dependent on external actors to exercise its legislative power.