AI is reshaping the world, but the industry remains dominated by US tech giants. Can Germany and Europe build digital sovereignty and compete with the US and China in the artificial intelligence race?
Europe produces excellent research and is a world leader in many scientific areas, including in technology, but has historically struggled to scale startups. The former is definitely something Europe can be proud of, the latter has to change.
Regarding LLMs, the EU may have a key strength for future development if and when it maintains its regulations regarding data protection and privacy. I thing that neither the U.S. nor China will be a trusted source in the foreseeable future.
As the French Nobel economist Philippe Aghion says, "I believe there will be a demand for a more ethical AI, an AI that avoids some dangers … “People want to be protected. To have some regulations will make us [Europeans] even more attractive.”
In brief, he argues Europe should build its own AI architecture, not rent American capability indefinitely. He draws an analogy to Airbus: Airbus succeeded because European governments decided sovereign aerospace capability was worth building collectively, Debeugny argues. Europe should apply the same logic to generative AI. The argument is that dependency on foreign labs is a structural liability, not just a cost line.
Europe produces excellent research and is a world leader in many scientific areas, including in technology, but has historically struggled to scale startups. The former is definitely something Europe can be proud of, the latter has to change.
Regarding LLMs, the EU may have a key strength for future development if and when it maintains its regulations regarding data protection and privacy. I thing that neither the U.S. nor China will be a trusted source in the foreseeable future.
As the French Nobel economist Philippe Aghion says, "I believe there will be a demand for a more ethical AI, an AI that avoids some dangers … “People want to be protected. To have some regulations will make us [Europeans] even more attractive.”
Edit: I found an interview from late last year with Olivier Debeugny, the CEO of French start-up Dragon LLM.
In brief, he argues Europe should build its own AI architecture, not rent American capability indefinitely. He draws an analogy to Airbus: Airbus succeeded because European governments decided sovereign aerospace capability was worth building collectively, Debeugny argues. Europe should apply the same logic to generative AI. The argument is that dependency on foreign labs is a structural liability, not just a cost line.