L‘Artificial intelligence (AI) is the watchword of 2024 and, more generally, of the next decade. It’s a pity that Europe And Italy they risk putting themselves on the wrong side of history. Just as has happened in the last 20 years with the Internet economy, in the Old Continent we do not lack anything in terms of regulatory vis. If, in fact, in the recent past we have proceeded with fines against the Big Tech (who did not make a plea in the face of billion-dollar requests from the EU), we are now the first to issue a regulation on AI (AI Act) with the aim of minimizing the risks resulting from opportunistic behaviour.
For goodness sake, everything is fine but Europe certainly won’t be the one to stop the race of a technology with transformative potential such as Artificial Intelligence. Furthermore, if we want to regulate its use, global governance is necessary in which all the great super powers are called to play an active role and share responsibility in the implementation phase. We must avoid, in particular, that a Europe that is very attentive to rights is overwhelmed, on the one hand, by rights States United which always and in any case put the market or, on the other, the China which, with its centralized planning, is focusing very significant resources on AI. To date, according to the Stanford AI Index Europe as a whole invests less than 10 billion in AI annually when the USA and China have allocated 70 and over 30 billion respectively per year.
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The real issue we should be concerned about is that investments in research and development on digital technologies in Europe are one fifth of those in America and less than half of those in China. The real issue for Europe is therefore to avoid slipping into a rearguard perspective where it is trying to slow down a technology when this will be ridden in other geopolitical areas, which at that point could become hegemonic from a technological and economic point of view.
Europe’s difficulties on the technological front also depend on other factors, characteristic of the Old Continent. I mean to refer to the high fragmentation of national markets, the difficulty of developing truly scalable projects and an underlying culture that makes any change chaotic and bureaucratic. This means that, in addition to the AI challenge, Europe risks losing the game even in traditional sectors, such as that automotivewhere the digital and environmental transition are determining a radical reorganization of value chains.
Europe therefore needs a shock. She needs to be pragmatic and get out of it sterile ethical perspective into which it has entered, placing the theme of competitiveness and the awareness that competition is played with giants who make the mass of investments the key to their respective development policies. In concrete terms, it means getting back to work politics industrialconcentrate investments on clear priorities from a technological point of view and abandon the attitude that five years ago led, in the name of an anti-trust law, to preventing the merger between Alstom and Siemens in the transport system.
Giuliano Noci, vice-rector of the Polytechnic of Milan
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