Transformative AI Strategy for Europe proposes more computing capacity and a supply-chain alliance

@privitera_Today, we publish a Transformative AI Strategy for Europe. Over the last few months, we’ve rallied researchers and engaged with governments to develop a plan for protecting the prosperity, sovereignty, and security of Europeans in a time of rapid AI progress. http://transformative-ai.eu @MonikaSchnitzer and I are honored to have convened an all-star team of thinkers and researchers contributing ambitious near-term objectives to make Europe relevant again, including: — Creating a Member State Alliance for Supply Chain Security (@anton_d_leicht et al) — Making European institutions ready to act in a transformative AI world (Conor McGlynn et al) — Securing Europe's share of global AI compute, in a ‘European Way’ that benefits local communities (@philip_fox_ et al) — Ensuring resilience to AI crises (@ben_s_bucknall et al) — Making Europe the global leader in assurance technology — And more objectives around security of supply and leverage (@milorignell et al), economic strength (@FraukeStehr et al), and safety/security (@NoemiDreksler et al) Our all-star senior expert council of Europe’s best and brightest (and non-European friends) reviewed drafts, provided strategic advice, and made suggestions for how to make the strategy more useful: @Ph_Aghion @Christophkw @bakkermichiel @ischinger @vestager @aleks_madry @FuestClemens Marta Kwiatkowska @LeoVaradkar @antonosika @DAcemogluMIT @Yoshua_Bengio It’s never been more clear: AI is real, and Europe needs to act. We’ve had all the warning shots and wake-up calls we need. Now the question is ‘what must be done?’ This strategy is our answer. http://transformative-ai.eu

@S_OhEigeartaighGood to see this transormative AI vision for Europe out from a lot of credible independent experts, and with backing from a lot of big names (including Ireland's Leo Varadker). I've only skimmed the exec summary so far, but I'm looking forward to going into it in depth. https://transformative-ai.eu/part-a#a-executive-summary

@bakkermichielWhile I think we should slow AI progress globally, we should speed it up in Europe. 🇪🇺 With @privitera_ @MonikaSchnitzer @antonosika @DAcemogluMIT and many others, we tried to answer: what should be Europe’s plan if AI keeps improving rapidly? 🧵

@bakkermichiel@privitera_ @MonikaSchnitzer @antonosika @DAcemogluMIT 2/ Europe is exposed to the risks of powerful AI while much of the economic upside and power is ending up elsewhere. Even if AI “goes well” we don’t want our defense and scientific + economic progress to depend on other countries’ goodwill in granting access to models and chips.

@bakkermichiel@privitera_ @MonikaSchnitzer @antonosika @DAcemogluMIT 3/ Our “Transformative AI Strategy” includes 1. Bring more AI compute to Europe 2. Build state capacity (UK AISI has led the way) 3. Prepare for AI-enabled crises like cyber attacks. 4. Build a coalition to ensure access to models and chips.

@bakkermichiel@privitera_ @MonikaSchnitzer @antonosika @DAcemogluMIT 4/ And should Europe use gov money to build a gov-controlled frontier lab? I think not and think we should instead use that money and focus to accelerate a compute buildout and help the many private labs that are spinning up across Europe already.

@bakkermichiel@privitera_ @MonikaSchnitzer @antonosika @DAcemogluMIT 5/ It feels somewhat odd to share a "Let's go AI Europe!" message after a weekend that's all about slowdown but I really think that a strong Europe is ultimately good for AI safety and necessary to mitigate concentrating AI power in 1-2 countries.

@bakkermichiel@privitera_ @MonikaSchnitzer @antonosika @DAcemogluMIT 6/ Too many people to name (see slide) but a few other contributors @aleks_madry @anton_d_leicht @Ph_Aghion @Yoshua_Bengio @FuestClemens Read the strategy on https://transformative-ai.eu/

@antonosikaThe news of the past days has reinforced that Al is the most consequential technology of our lifetimes, and it is arriving much faster than Europe is planning for. Leading researchers and experts have been working hard on a serious attempt to fix that, proposing a Transformative AI Strategy for Europe. It's been led by @privitera_ and @MonikaSchnitzer, with contributors including @bakkermichiel, @Ph_Aghion, @vestager and @Yoshua_Bengio. Personally, I particularly strongly agree with the following objectives: Reliable access to frontier Al, 15% of global Al compute by 2030, a member state alliance for supply chain security, institutions that move quickly, and fast-growing European companies. A piece I would like to emphasize, and add more weight to, is also the importance of international coordination for ensuring a safe AI transition. This will take courage and decisive action. Europe has done hard things before. Time to do it again. If you care, please forward this to people that would get value in learning about what is at stake and what we can do. http://transformative-ai.eu

@DorialexanderWell documented effort but cannot fix internal contradictions: frontier (or even economically workable ai) is not an "asset" but a continuous practice, so any access will be submitted to constant renegociation. It's not just US AI being submitted to export control, Chinese labs are typically evolving their licensing conditions: hence why GLM 5.3 is not on Mistral. Between a state-mandated Anthropic moonshot and doing nothing, there is a wide range of options that definitely requires some efforts and investments still very much doable for one of the three largest market in the world. All currently leading Chinese labs effort ran on a few billion investments, at some point quality AI training (and overcoming skill issues) is just paying for itself.

@wellingmaxRT @privitera_: Today, we publish a Transformative AI Strategy for Europe. Over the last few months, we’ve rallied researchers and engaged…

@eliebakouchnice initiative, it's all about compute. i wish it was a bit more about financing model building but that's understandable for comparison mistral's target for compute in 2023 is 1GW while this initiative targets 45GW

@DKokotajloIMO europe needs to wake up to what's on the horizon with AGI, and then negotiate and bargain for an international agreement asap. Europe has no realistic chance of catching up to the frontier and will have less leverage every year as the singularity approaches. This report seems directionally correct to me but weak sauce.

@eliebakouch@scaling01 doesn't really make sense as an estimate, see the breakdown here, you can build a frontier lab with much less (this is more than what oai or ant have raise so far)

@TacoCohenRT @privitera_: Today, we publish a Transformative AI Strategy for Europe. Over the last few months, we’ve rallied researchers and engaged…

@rcbregmanThis is an insanely important report about how completely, utterly and totally unprepared Europe is for the arrival of transformative AI. A single data centre in Malaysia will soon have a third of the AI computing power of *all* of Europe combined. Two data centres in the US will have more than our entire continent. And that's just page one... More than 60 of Europe's top minds (including two Nobel laureates) have just published "A Transformative AI Strategy for Europe", an independent report about how dire the situation is. As the world gets darker, we risk being squeezed and trampled by the US and China. On the current path, the report warns, even Europe's richest economies could slide toward middle-income status in a world run from Silicon Valley and Beijing. Here's where we are right now: → The EU hosts just 5% of the world's AI compute. The US: 75%. → Not one of the ten most valuable AI companies in the world is European. → And this year, Europe got locked out of the world's most powerful AI model, twice, by American export rules. The EU's own cybersecurity agency had to negotiate for weeks to get in, and still doesn't have the latest version. For years the comfortable story was: America innovates, Europe regulates. Well, that story is dead. You can't regulate what you can't access. And you can't protect 450 million people with second-rate cyberdefence against first-rate attackers. The good news is that we have some leverage: Europe holds the single biggest chokepoint in the global chip supply chain (ASML). And this report sketches a plan to increase our leverage massively. Here's what we need to do: 1. Build a member state alliance for supply chain security – Netherlands, Germany and France at minimum – founded before the end of 2026. 2. Recruit many more frontier AI experts inside European governments ASAP. 3. Aim for at least 15% of global AI compute on European soil by 2030, built so local communities actually benefit. 4. Make Europe the world leader in AI assurance: hardware that can prove how AI is being used. 5. Prepare for crises and emergencies, such as engineered viruses and highly advanced automated cyberattacks. It's too late to catch up with the US and China. But it's not too late to build leverage . Read the full report here --> https://transformative-ai.eu/part-a#a-executive-summary

@S_OhEigeartaighRT @rcbregman: This is an insanely important report about how completely, utterly and totally unprepared Europe is for the arrival of trans…

@JsevillamolThere is one proposal here that matters head and shoulders above the rest: Europe must have a stake in AI. This requires facilitating the construction of 20GW of datacenters by end of 2028, and 100 GW by 2030. Everything else is commentary.

@bakkermichielJust to clarify, the Transformative AI report does NOT recommend spending €800B as a default strategy. The report pushes for access to frontier AI as a default strategy and explains that building a frontier AI lab (at least when done top down by one or more EU governments) would require a huge reordering of priorities in Europe. I also agree w Simon that, even if there were the political commitment, actually securing €800B given current interest rates would be very hard. But my bigger concern is that, even if political will and money weren’t the issue, I’m sceptical that a government-backed lab could move at a similar pace to OpenAI/Anthropic so you might end up spending 100B+ on something which doesnt end up building a competitive model. In the report we say that (if we would build a gov funded lab) substantial operational freedom would be required but I'm skeptical that govs could sustain that in practice, especially around things like 10M+ compensation packages and products that would have to be released to match the speed of private labs. Instead, I think EU govs should help ensure there's enough compute and sufficiently deep capital markets for private companies like Mistral (and hopefully many others) to keep growing and build better models (can't wait for le chaton fat!). Seems like a much better strategy than a situation where govs start competing with our own private companies.

@ohlennartI recently spent some time thinking about what Europe should do regarding AI. Others have spent much more time, including this great strategy. I agree with a lot of it, but I put somewhat more weight on two things: 1. Partner with the US as the mainline strategy. 2. Europe's biggest economic opportunity may be in complements to frontier AI (not substituting): robotics, advanced manufacturing, pharma, biotech. Leverage existing strengths and ask what becomes dramatically more valuable if frontier AI exists? More generally, a lot of AI strategy isn't really AI-specific. It's the familiar required reform agenda covering labor markets, capital markets, etc. All made considerably more urgent by AI.

@AndrewCurran_French finance minister Roland Lescure suggested today that calls to slow down development of AI are a ploy by U.S. AI labs so they can stay in first place, and that France and Europe should ignore them and accelerate instead.

@WillManidisits still so underrated the degree to which our intelligence supercycle was as much reliant on innovations in capital formation as it was innovations in the technology itself. europe is losing not only because they can't built it, but primarily because they can't finance it

Transformative AI Strategy for Europe proposes more computing capacity and a supply-chain alliance

TLDR

Combined views

Transformative AI Strategy for Europe proposes more computing capacity and a supply-chain alliance

22 Sources

Combined views

Sentiment

Summary

TLDR

Sentiment

Summary

Sentiment

Summary

Sentiment

Summary

22 Sources