BRUSSELS, Oct 8 (Reuters) - The European Commission on Wednesday announced a 1-billion-euro ($1.1 billion) plan to ramp up the use of artificial intelligence in key industries amid a push to cut the European Union’s reliance on U.S. and Chinese technologies. The EU executive’s Apply AI strategy followed an action plan unveiled in April which seeks to lighten the regulatory burden and costs for startups struggling to comply with landmark AI rules which entered into force in August last year.
The move also underscores Europe’s goal of achieving strategic autonomy in key sectors amid trade tensions with the United States and China and the dominance of U.S. Big Tech. “I want the future of AI to be made in Europe,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. “AI adoption needs to be widespread, and with these strategies, we will help speed up the process. We will drive this ‘AI first’ mindset across all our key sectors, from robotics to healthcare, energy and automotive,” she said. The Commission singled out healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy, mobility, manufacturing, construction, agri-food, defence, communications and culture as critical sectors that should use more AI. Sector-specific measures under the Apply AI strategy include setting up a network of AI-powered advanced screening centres in healthcare and developing agentic AI in manufacturing, climate and pharmaceutical industries. The 1 billion euros will come from EU research projects such as Horizon Europe and the Digital Europe programme, which may encourage EU countries and the private sector to provide matching funds, the Commission said. ($1 = 0.8569 euros)
It’s true that AI has been a net negative for society. But leaving the cobtrol of AI tech at the hands of powers that want to hurt the EU’s sovereignty is even worse.
Shooting yourself in the foot so others can’t shoot you in the foot? No.
How about outlawing and banning the shooting of feet instead? That might work better.
The EU is also working of regulating AI. What else should they do? You can’t outlaw people using AI.
Why can’t you outlaw it? Define generative/inference AI systems, ban companies from interacting with EU people and companies, and then heavily punish anything being revealed to be commercially sold, made or used with that AI within the EU.
You can certainly try. The result would just be that people would use it in secret. Also what is “AI” to you? What exactly are you proposing to ban? You can’t ban something that isn’t well defined.
generative AI, which is definitionally explicit in terms of how the technology works, and can therefore be banned. Analytical AI (like, mammography scan pattern recognition, which is the only “AI” of value) is technologically disjointed, not created by the typical genAI companies, and can therefore be excluded from the ban.
So the thing where you remove a person from the background of a picture should be illegal? That’s generative AI. Auto complete in Google is a kind of generative AI. Oh, maybe you mean neural networks? Those are used in a lot of things other than gen AI. You can be overly broad when writing laws, or you end up hurting people that did nothing wrong. But if you’re too specific the law is either easy to circumvent, of quickly outdated.
I’d prefer for the guns to be removed from both powers and civilians.
yeah exactly! AI should have never been allowed to exist and/or allowed to be used in the EU, and anything created with it should be heavily punished.