Towards a European #AI Model

At the European Commission Single Market Forum in Riga I was honored with an opportunity to share my thoughts with policy leaders and business representatives from all Member States on how to take charge of a humanistic European #AI Future.

Europe's values and way of life have to take precedence and shape this trajectory, building a unique model that attracts talent and investment as well as the enthusiasm of its businesses and citizens. Given the current state of how #AI is deeply affecting our lives already, and the state of the global race where Europe needs a lot of catching up to do, the time to act is yesterday.

Why now?

• On the purely Tech end we finally have the explosive mix of unprecedented mass data generation, sophisticated algorithms, and much faster processing hardware.
• #AI is the big strategic bet of all key sectors, be them Big Tech, states or mega-startups.
• With the resources dedicated to deep AGI, the game can change at any moment with a breakthrough and getting from AGI to ASI may be in the blink of an eye by the very nature of how #AI is expected to work at those levels of maturity.
• Much of narrow/weak AI is already commercialized, having tremendous impact on our lives, cognition, jobs and the efficiency of our businesses as we speak.
• While there are many commendable bottom-up initiatives by #AI stewards as well as some state-level efforts to come up with an #AI Ethics framework, both the speed and the efficiency of these efforts has to be sped up drastically and get to an overarching global framework that goes beyond niceties.

Europe in the Global AI race: what to do

•  While there are announcements that outline an increase in investment, the EU's AI investment vs. main competitors is not adequate. US (business + military) and China lead by a landslide: Russia's visible investment is low but very concentrated. Also, when we talk about investment in startups it needs to be called out that the Top 100 #AI Startups have a capitalization of cca. $12 Bn, the biggest Chinese AI startup has an investment of $3.2 Bn. So many AI Startups are gargantuan babies even when they are born - and Europe has to produce agile mega-structures of this magnitude to compete successfully.
• The pace of getting ready and actionable is not fast enough. e.g. China has a 3 step plan ending in global AI dominance by 2030. (I think it will be delivered faster.) This year they have ended Phase I successfully by becoming the biggest global investors in AI, beating the US.
• The lack of a clear and incentivized #AI commercialization path, a lack of of flexible structures targeted at that aggravates the already gaping European innovation paradox. The EU should invest into attracting/training talent, fast scaling, localization, incentivizing fast adoption.
• Europe is ramping up its game to become more strategic about #AI, and has an unfair advantage in regard of caring more about the ethical component as well as societal impact, which is,, frankly, less of a focus with leading global players. The biggest danger of the coming times is that of a half-baked, dangerous but efficient AI taking pole position in the race, enabling its owner to dictate the rules of the game in a given #AI subdomain. (Needless to say that if this domain is cybersecurity, or autonomous weapon systems, probably everybody will feel the pain.)
• Towards its businesses, the EU has to foster both the sophisticated data understanding/strategy that any kind of #AI strategy needs as a prerequisite, as well as the will to experiment with AI tools that are already available (e.g. chatbots), but not stop there and have a comprehensive AI business, strategy that goes far beyond "Tech- only" and affects all aspects of business.
• There is an imperative to make sense of the AI dialogue and be an information steward towards society and business. There is so much misunderstanding about #AI and the current media model does not help at all in separating the wheat from the chaff. The point above on sophisticated data strategies combined with agile citizen polling & participation is of crucial importance for policymakers as well.

The EU needs to learn from the successes of leaders in the field: e.g. focus and centralization from China, fast commercialization and scaling from the US, etc. Also, it needs to dramatically up both the magnitude of investment and the agility of support structures - many of which need to be created from scratch or transformed deeply - that should be cornerstones of its comprehensive #AI model. By the very nature of the technology at the core of this race, the game can change in minutes and breakthroughs are rewarded asymmetrically, so laggards can be left much more behind than anytime before. 

Europe has a unique potential to hardwire uncompromising ethical principles both on the regulatory end as well as into the core of this fickle and powerful #AI tech wave and lead the world in that regard. The outlines are visible, worries as well as great expectations are shared across the board - all this needs to transform into a rather speedy but conscientious will to act.

#artificialintelligence #Europe #EU