Von der Leyen calls for doubling Europe’s efforts in AI

On Tuesday, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, warned that :

“the European Union must double its efforts to avoid falling behind in the global race for artificial intelligence, which has become the new frontier of competitiveness.”

In a speech given at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, she stated:

“Whoever comes first will be served first, and the race has already begun: our future competitiveness relies on integrating artificial intelligence into our daily activities.”

She emphasized that :

“Artificial intelligence is capable of enhancing productivity at an unprecedented rate, surpassing the boundaries of competitive ability. Europe is in a favorable position that allows it to become a champion in industrial artificial intelligence used to transform critical infrastructures.”

Redouble efforts

While the United States and China currently dominate the scene in terms of developing these technologies, Von der Leyen said:

“Europe must double its efforts and show the way towards responsible use of artificial intelligence.”

In December, after difficult negotiations, the European Union agreed on unprecedented legislation at a global level to regulate artificial intelligence. The aim of this legislation is to encourage innovation while limiting potential violations of these technologies.

Excessive regulation

In the face of the development of American AI tools (such as OpenAI’s GPT-chat and Google’s Bard), the European Union expressed concern that excessive regulation could eliminate European company projects, including “Aleph Alpha.” in Germany and “Mistral AI” in France, by making the development of these technologies prohibitively expensive.

The final text includes mandatory rules for everyone to ensure the quality of data used in algorithm development, verifying that it does not violate copyright, and enhancing restrictions on the most powerful systems in sensitive areas.

This legislation establishes a climate of trust for Ursula von der Leyen by dealing individually with high-risk situations, such as real-time biometric identification, allowing for innovation in all other fields.

“According to Von Der Leyen, the European Union has 200,000 experienced engineers in the field of artificial intelligence, which is a greater concentration than the United States or China.”

She added that :

“The 27 member states in the Union have a significant competitive advantage in industrial data,” by providing the ability to train systems using unparalleled quality data.

Von der Leyen continued, stating:

“We want to invest in this field and enhance the access of European startups and small and medium-sized companies to supercomputers on the continent, as well as shared data spaces in all European Union languages, so that artificial intelligence can also work for non-English speakers.”