Can Europe compete?
The European Union's AI Continent Action Plan aims to position Europe as a global leader in artificial intelligence by funding AI development, enhancing competitiveness, and ensuring the technology aligns with EU values. The plan will invest €200 billion to boost development in Europe, including setting up AI gigafactories to support startups, industry, and researchers, which will draw on a €20 billion InvestAI fund. It also proposes the Cloud and AI Development Act to increase private investment in cloud and data centers, with a goal to triple the EU’s data center capacity in the next five to seven years.
The plan emphasizes increasing access to high-quality data through the Data Union Strategy and establishing data labs within AI factories. It will promote AI in strategic sectors like public services and healthcare through a new Apply AI Strategy and a complementary European Strategy for AI in Science. The plan also includes initiatives to strengthen AI skills and talents, such as launching the AI Skills Academy and facilitating international recruitment of highly skilled non-EU workers.
To simplify the implementation of the AI Act, the plan proposes launching the AI Act Service Desk and supporting national AI regulatory sandboxes in order to provide guidelines, facilitate codes of practice, and develop standards to ensure compliance. These strategic priorities and actions are designed to create a thriving AI ecosystem in Europe and, in the words of Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, work "towards a future where tech innovation drives industry and public services forward, bringing concrete benefits to our citizens and businesses through trustworthy AI."
Part of the EU's AI action plan is to provide funding for 5 "gigafactories" to support and train models. (Source: Rintrah Stock, Flux.)
How will it work?
The aim of the plan is to harness Europe's existing strengths to boost artificial intelligence innovation and deployment: robust traditional industries, a large single market with established safety rules like the AI Act, high-quality research, a substantial pool of skilled professionals, and a well-established startup scene. The plan outlines several strategies to capitalise on these assets, with the intention to transform industries and talent into engines of AI innovation that will use world-class computational power and enhance data access.
The plan's "Apply AI" strategy is intended to promote AI use in industries such as the public sector and healthcare. Existing European Digital Innovation Hubs will be repurposed into "Experience Centres for AI" to support sector-specific AI solutions, particularly for SMEs (Small and Medium sized Enterprises). Additionally, the plan aims to strengthen skills and talent by facilitating international recruitment, retaining existing talent, and launching educational programs on AI and generative AI through the AI Skills Academy.
The plan also focuses on simplifying regulatory compliance with the AI Act, creating an AI Act Service Desk to provide legal certainty and practical support for smaller innovators. It builds on the AI Innovation Package announced in January 2024, supporting research and innovation in generative AI through initiatives like GenAI4EU and the upcoming European AI Research Council.
What's at stake?
The European Commission sees its plan as essential for positioning Europe as a global leader in artificial intelligence, and aims to shape the next phase of AI development and strengthen its competitiveness through what it is presenting as bold actions. At its heart, it addresses directly the ongoing global race for AI leadership, helping the EU compete more aggressively with the U.S. and China. Its hope is that, by pivoting from regulation to enabling AI, the European Commission will be able to correct its course and reduce dependence on external infrastructure, ensuring sufficient sovereign cloud capacity to support AI ambitions.
The plan is also clearly focussing on boosting economic growth and social prosperity by harnessing AI's transformative power, seeking to increase AI adoption across industries and the public sector, enhance AI capabilities through improved infrastructure and data access, and strengthen AI skills and talent. While organisations within Europe have already made some gains, most notably Mistral AI based in Paris, the continent as a whole is widely seen to be falling behind the USA and China. Simplifying regulatory compliance and fostering trust and security in AI are crucial elements to promote takeup of new technologies, but the plan is also seen as essential to Europe's strategic autonomy in critical technologies as the two AI superpowers engage in an increasingly hostile trade war.
Critics highlight several concerns, in particular the mismatch between its ambitious goals and the allocated resources. They argue that the plan's broad scope is not sufficiently backed by significant funding, raising doubts about the EU's ability to compete with the US and China. Regulatory uncertainty is another major issue, with fears that the plan could lead to deregulation and instability, while the AI Act, not fully in place for another two years, could be seen as a potential hindrance to innovation, particularly for startups. A regular observation is that GDPR poses barriers to data-driven innovation by limiting the availability of training data.
Environmental concerns have been raised due to the plan's focus on expanding data centers, which could lead to increased energy and water usage. Additionally, there is criticism that the plan relies too heavily on Big Tech's AI development model, which is seen as energy-intensive and potentially harmful to privacy. Critics call for a greater emphasis on "frugal AI approaches" that use less computation and targeted, high-quality data. Overall, some view the plan as lacking in novelty and merely repeating past announcements.
This article was co-created with AI.