Europe has been conspicuously absent from high-level talks about how to use artificial intelligence safely, despite crafting the world’s first comprehensive set of rules to govern the technology.
The irony underscores how far Europe has fallen behind the United States and China in the AI race. Although Europe took the lead on AI regulation years ago, it has fewer frontier models, data centers and big tech companies to compete on an equal footing with its larger trading partners.
“Europe is at acute risk of marginalization on the global stage because of the extraordinary developments of AI,” warned Nobel-prize winning French economist Philippe Aghion. He co-wrote recent report that argues Europe needs an urgent “course correction if it wants to thrive in the AI era.”
The European Union has long aspired to be the global leader in “safe AI,” with a strategy that includes hefty fines. Yet, as mostly American AI executives recently committed to “self-police” the world’s leading AI models, it was patently clear that the EU’s approach was not the one being followed.
Europe has long struggled to produce the tech giants boasted by Silicon Valley. The problem now extends to a lack of frontier AI models that can rival the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude or comparable tools from China’s DeepSeek.
European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde last month described the continent’s AI predicament as “awkward.”
“Either (Europe) holds back on adopting, because it cannot protect its data, and forgoes the growth — or it adopts AI quickly, becomes highly dependent, and risks losing the freedom to organize its economy according to its own values,” she said in a speech.
Paris-based Mistral AI unveiled a model last week that it argues is on par with its better-known American competitors, providing a glimmer of hope for Europe’s AI industry, but it remains to be seen if it will provide a serious rival to offerings from the AI giants.
by CNN – Europe leads the world on AI rules. So why is it missing from the AI safety debate?
