The European Union has unveiled a groundbreaking €200 billion investment initiative aimed at accelerating AI development across the continent, marking the world’s largest public-private partnership for AI.
Speaking at the AI Summit in Paris on Tuesday, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen highlighted the crucial need for substantial financial investment in computational power.
She said, “Computational power requires immediate substantial financial capital from both public and private. In this context, I welcome the European AI Champions Initiative that pledges €150 billion from providers, investors, and industry.
“And today, I can announce that with our Invest AI Initiative, we can top up by €50 billion, So thereby, we aim to mobilise a total of €200 billion for AI investment in Europe. We will have a focus on industrial, and mission-critical applications. It will be the largest public-private partnership in the world for the development of trustworthy AI.”
Outlining the EU’s vision for AI, von der Leyen stressed three key pillars, saying, “First, European AI focuses on AI adoption in complex applications using our unique industrial and manufacturing data and know-how. Second, European AI is cooperative, it brings talents together from different countries, from different sectors, from different backgrounds. It is that same spirit of our collaborative approach to science which has produced many a breakthrough and a huge pool of talent. And third, European AI embraces the power of open source, and open source.”
“This European brand of open innovation is showing results, but now, it needs to be supercharged. It needs to get a push, and this is why it’s the right place to be at this AI Action Summit. We will act in two ways. First, we want to accelerate innovation. Europe has some of the world’s fastest public super computers. We are now putting them at the service of our best startups and our best scientists, so they can forge the AI we need,” she said.
She further revealed that the EU is rapidly expanding its AI infrastructure as she said,“In just a few months, we have set up a record of 12 AI factories, and we are investing €10 billion in them. And this is not a promise, this is happening right now, and it is the largest public investment in AI in the world.”
The EU Commission President went on to say, “Our goal is that every company, not only the big players, can access the computing power they need. We want AI developers to compete based on how innovative they are, not just on the access to chips, or the size of their financial firepower. And now, we are also bringing AI factories to the next level, to AI giga-factories- very large data computing infrastructure for very large models,” which will allow talents from everywhere to come and work on AI together, giving them the infrastructure and the space to do so.
She then reaffirmed the EU’s commitment to AI safety and regulatory consistency through the AI Act, saying, “Yes, AI needs competition, but AI also needs collaboration, and AI needs the confidence of the people, and has to be safe. And actually, this is the purpose of the AI Act, to provide for one single set of safe rules across the European Union, 450 million people, instead of 27 different national regulations and safety is in the interest of business.”
Highlighting the impact of AI beyond Europe, she stated “Cooperative AI can be attractive well beyond Europe, including our partners in the global south. And in this spirit, we fully support the AI Foundation that is being launched today. AI can be a gift to humanity, but we must make sure that its benefits are widespread, and that its benefits are accessible to all. We want AI to be a force for good. We want an AI where everyone collaborates and everyone benefits. This is our path, this is our European path.”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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