Artificial Intelligence | EU: "Digital Colony"

Artificial intelligence is also a question of power and powerlessness for the EU, which has so far lagged behind the US and China. For EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, this is "Europe's moment of independence." In her recent State of the European Union address, she called it the EU's "mission" to "take control of the technologies that will drive our economies." This control must not be relinquished in a world where "the major powers are either ambivalent or openly hostile."

Those who control AI and set the technological standards will, on the one hand, make their competitors dependent on them and, on the other, reap the benefits. "AI will exacerbate income inequality between countries and disproportionately benefit advanced economies," the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concludes.

For the EU, it is therefore a matter of being the "advanced economy" that sets the standards. However, it is far from being that: "25 years after the beginning of the commercial internet age, the EU must face an uncomfortable truth: despite some notable exceptions, its digital ecosystem and innovation economy have fallen behind the US, while China is also expanding its market share," writes Raluca Csernatoni of the Brussels School of Governance . In addition to the dominant digital platforms - online search engines, app stores, social networks, cloud hyperscalers - a large part of the EU's critical digital infrastructure - data centers, submarine cables, semiconductors - is now operated or provided by foreign players. This, according to Csernatoni, threatens Europe's "technological sovereignty." A paper by European high-tech experts even calls the EU a "digital colony" of the US.

There is currently a glimmer of hope, however: Dutch chip giant ASML has acquired a stake in the French AI startup Mistral for €1.3 billion. Mistral is considered a promising candidate for the development of large-scale language models and, with LeChat, offers an alternative to OpenAI's AI bot ChatGPT. The company's biggest advocate is French President Emmanuel Macron. He even publicly called on French citizens to download LeChat. Thanks to the latest financing round, Mistral is now valued at almost €12 billion, making it the most valuable AI company in Europe. However, the value of direct US competitors such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musk's xAI is estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars.