AI that never
leaves your office.

AI has opened doors onto computing that were not open before: automation, and an ease with the machine that genuinely changes how work gets done. The problem lies elsewhere. Over the next few years AI will settle into every layer of companies infrastructure in Europe, and the overwhelming majority of that use rests, and will rest, on American and Chinese giants. That is where the question of sovereignty begins.

Because one of Europe’s great resources is the way it thinks. Our education, our research and our professional craft are among the most valuable things this continent has. And when you use an AI you do not only hand over what you are working on, you hand over how you work. Our way of resolving problems, of doing things leaves the continent, trains a model, and returns to us as a product: a loop of dependency, a digital colonisation of our education and our know-how. Extrapolated, we would not need that education any more, because the models have it for us. But since we do not control the models, and their price, we no longer control our own intelligence.

Hence the importance of keeping part of our work with AI under control: on a physical machine we own, that we can see and hear, standing close to us. It is a safety net first, the day access to the big models closes, or is repriced, part of the work stays here and stays ours. It is also the only serious way to handle sensitive data: the tool is encapsulated, and it is controlled. That is precisely why Butler exists, an AI toolbox under the desk that already does a good share of the job well, and with which you own a piece of your sovereignty and your freedom.