BRUSSELS — As the U.S. and China compete to train the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence models, Europe is stepping back. European politicians and tech executives have in recent weeks shifted their focus away from frontier AI as it becomes clear the bloc has no artificial intelligence models that can compete with top American or Chinese models, and Europe’s leading contender Mistral faces questions over its performance. Instead, a new mantra has emerged: Europe doesn’t need to own the models as long as it can put them to work.
American leaders OpenAI and Anthropic this summer had to disclose incidents in which AI agents broke out of testing. This led the companies to slow-walk and tread cautiously with the release of their latest models, just as Chinese open-source models are emerging as a credible alternative to U.S. proprietary models. For Europe, relying on U.S. or Chinese models is not without risk, as the bloc is already dependent on both for all the technology underpinning AI, such as chips and cloud services.
But leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, say Europe should focus more on helping its industrial and corporate base benefit from AI. They argue that building homegrown tech champions that can deliver those tools is a smart strategy that could help Europe win this next phase as America remains focused on staying ahead of China. As politicians and industry meet Wednesday in Dublin for an international AI summit, the Irish governmental organizers have sought to focus the talks largely on how AI is used.
Not everyone is on board with the direction of travel. Both the European Commission and the Council of the EU, which represents national governments, have indicated that the focus should shift to how to apply the technology. That followed a Sept. 4 seminar at which the Commission’s AI envoy, Siemens chair Jim Hagemann Snabe, told 27 commissioners that the EU should focus less on winning the race to build AI and more on how to use it to turn around the bloc’s productivity, two Commission officials said.
The scale of the challenge is clear: At the end of last year, only 1 in 5 European businesses used AI in their activities, with Denmark as the frontrunner (42%) and Romania at the bottom of the pack (5.2%), according to Eurostat. The bloc’s poor showing is mainly because of small and medium-sized companies that make up the lion’s share of Europe's economy. Last year, 55% of Europe’s large companies used AI, compared to only 17% among small companies — who, according to a recent OECD report — limit themselves to off-the-shelf AI tools for specific tasks.
Companies that considered using AI but decided against it cited a lack of expertise as their top concern, even before regulatory concerns. American business leaders have also said that regulatory and political uncertainty is holding them back. Over the next few weeks, the European Commission will make several efforts to boost adoption rates.
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