The EU AI Act is expected to introduce its most important rules for general AI models (GPAI) on August 2 Ulf KristsonCEO von Bosch Stefan Hartungand the Tech lobby group CCIA Europewhose members are alphabet, meta and Apple.
At the TNW conference in Amsterdam on June 20, Eoghan O'Neill, Senior Policy Officer of the AI office of the European Commission, dealt with the potential delay in the introduction. He made it clear that the Commission plans to complete its rules for GPAI in July. The European Parliament will then take its position on the standards.
“This is a large, sophisticated technology and we want to do it right,” he said. “We need specific obligations to capture some of the most effective or potentially harmful models as part of the AI law.”
O'Neill emphasized that the guidelines were collected by a wide Code of Practice Group. The members included important model providers, civil society organizations, NGOs, academics, AI security experts, SMEs and European industry giants. “It is a large tent with all these voices from the stakeholder community,” he said.
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However, the technology leaders warned that the EU must reduce its regulatory stress.
“Europe is not the United States,” said Fabrizio del Maffeo, CEO of Axelera Ai, a chip company based in the Netherlands. “We have many languages, many markets and many regulations – both European and locally. And these are suffocating growth because they create limits that make it difficult for companies to expand.”
Del Maffeo said his company signed the petition for “EU Inc”, a proposal to create a standardized legal person for startups that would make it easier to operate in the EU member states.
EU Inc would sit under the 28th regime of the Bloc, a Pan-European legal framework that is supposed to extend startups throughout the union. In a speech at the Davos Economic Forum in January, the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen said The rules would combine “corporate law, bankruptcy, labor law, [and] Taxation “in” a single and simple frame “.
However, regulation is not the only problem, emphasized del Maffeo. The obsession with starting new startups must be compensated for with a focus on scaling existing startups, which, as he argued, requires more than politics.
The data prove it: Europe explains Only 8% Of the global scaleups, compared to 60% in North America, and no EU-found startup in the past 50 years has exceeded an assessment of € 100 billion. The region is the place of birth of countless innovations, but struggles to transform it into large companies.
“If you look at mechanical engineers, we will lead the world,” he said. “We are great in automobile, but we lose the traction. We make great robotics, but we also lose the traction.”
The spokesman for the TNW Conference shared various views about the future of Europe. Credit: TNW
Peter van der putten, director of the AI Lab and senior scientist at the software company Pegasaltems, repeated this view. He emphasized that the EU must become more attractive for both domestic and international investments.
The financing data underlines the investment gap: European startups that grew up $ 52 billion (€ 44 billion) in risk capital last year – far less than that $ 209 billion (177 billion €) Your US colleagues were attracted.
“Investments could come from the EU, but also from the USA,” said van der putten. “Regulations could be adjusted to make it easier and more attractive for financing that the United States will flow to Europe.”
Europe is also able to withdraw talents from the USA, says Elise de Reus, co -founder of Cradle. She pointed to A growing trend by European engineers who return from great technical jobs in the United States, drawn by intentionally controlled work and better quality of life.
“We welcome European engineers who used to work at large Tech companies like Facebook in the USA to come back and to help solve social and global problems such as climate change,” she said.
“We may be a bit too modest. We should measure happiness and not GDP, which is not a sustainable metric. I don't think we should copy and insert the American system.”
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