This is why we need a European Artificial Intelligence: investments, algorithms, defence and development structures
What if there were a European Artificial Intelligence, a system able to stand up to the current dominance of the US and China? What if there were a structure of algorithms, codes, networks, services, data centres and mechanisms resulting from collaboration, in Brussels, between Paris and Berlin, Rome and Madrid, Amsterdam and of course the cities of other EU member states, perhaps even convincing London to finally set its Euroscepticism aside and join the club?
We could give it a name charged with symbolic values: ‘Montaigne’, ‘Kant’, ‘Marie Curie’ or – why not? – ‘Leonardo’, the archetypal and best-known “Renaissance man”, with his multifaceted polymathic tech culture steeped in humanistic knowledge, a sense of beauty and pioneering disposition in the field of scientific knowledge. That way, we could tell the world that the Vitruvian Man and the drawings in the Codex Atlanticus, already considered part of the heritage of humanity, are outstanding contemporary examples of a world that looks to the future, signs of Humanism which is now taking the form of “Digital Humanism”: the human person at the centre of everything, machines at his service (offering a reassuring response to Martin Heidegger’s fears and, in Italy, those of Primo Levi and Italo Calvino in his prophetic Six Memos for the Next Millennium). What if intelligence, including AI, were guided towards performance, performing well, and doing good, at the service of the public’s rights and needs (starting with critical awareness, research and good information) and the competitive needs of European companies?
We live in a restless, multipolar world, marked by political and economic balances that are fragile as never before, subjected to deterioration and damage of every kind, from environmental catastrophes to pandemics, wars and rising social tensions. The old bipolar order (the balance of atomic terror between the US and USSR) broke down 35 years ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a new balance shows very little sign of appearing on the horizon. Globalisation dominated by rampant, rapacious finance is over; “regional” neo-globalisation is seeking a more stable order. The future, in short, is uncertain as never before.
And today, right here in Europe, we know that the system of values and interests that has inspired our shared journey (in summary, an ability to maintain a combination of liberal democracy, the market and welfare, i.e. freedom, well-being and social inclusion) is in serious danger of entering a crisis.
The US and China are moving along conflicting, divergent paths (without, however, renouncing the possibilities of dialogue and exchange). The autocracies, starting with Putin’s Russia, are presenting menacing faces. Sovereignism and populism, like a termite infestation, also threaten to corrode the foundations of our democracies. Demographic imbalances exacerbate the entire situation.
In short, Europe – an economic giant, a rich market with its 450 million inhabitants, cradle of civilisation – sees a bleak horizon ahead.
Out of this awareness comes the idea that the EU must turn a new page in its history, establish a new political and institutional path (with majority governance), make the decision of massive investment in its future. The main topics are precisely security and defence, in addition to that of sustainable development. We are also well aware that defence and security also mean energy, scientific research, the digital economy and – as we were suggesting – European Artificial Intelligence. These are all fundamental questions that we hope will be at the heart of political debate in EU member states, ahead of the vote in June to renew the European Parliament and determine the structures and programmes of the future European Commission.
On the other hand, they’re questions that call for massive investments, able to keep pace with the massive public spending injection of the US and financial strategies of China.
There are reassuring signs from Brussels, in this final period of the legislature. One example is a “European Defence Industrial Strategy”, which will be discussed at the end of February and may be financed by an EU fund that can raise resources from the markets. This would be a new fund, following the positive experience of the SURE social-assistance funds for workers put in difficult Covid-induced economic situations and Next Generation EU for the reforms and investments needed for European recovery and modernisation, from which Italy has received the most resources.
“Eurobonds and more resources for common military spending,” says EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking of the need for “a €100 billion fund” (La Stampa, 17 February). “Common debt, starting with defence, is possible today,” comments Francesco Giavazzi, an economist with a keen eye on European prospects (Corriere della Sera, 18 February). “An EU Defence Commissioner would be an important step in strengthening Europe,” maintains Roberto Cingolani, CEO of Leonardo, an Italian company that is also strategic within the military sector (Il Foglio, 17 February).
Donald Trump’s threats to break the current balance of NATO if elected to the White House, leaving Europe defenceless against Putin’s aggression, were only the latest wake-up call. And even if the idea of common defence meets with resistance from governments and military structures in single countries (France and Germany, first and foremost), the Eurobarometer reveals that EU citizens are ahead of their politicians: 77% of Europeans say they are in favour of common defence and 66% say we need more funds. Such a defence also involves cyber issues, and needs to process data efficiently, identify responses and organise countermeasures – all areas where artificial intelligence is essential.
The rationale for a common EU Fund for energy and strategic raw materials is similar, and indeed for an AI Fund.
So we need resources, political strategies and rules, as well as a truly fundamental cultural choice about what characteristics a European AI must have.
It’s a long, narrow road. The US is navigating within a context characterised by the wealth and power of Big Tech, dominant thus far, but also within a framework of liberal values. China employs massive public resources, solid technologically aggressive human capital, the power of determined dirigisme and party discipline.
So what about Europe? The EU boasts the world’s first systemic regulation of Artificial Intelligence (expert jurist Giusella Finocchiaro writes competently about this in the pages of Quali regole per l’Intelligenza Artificiale, Il Mulino) and its experts are clear about the need for a “multilateral approach” with respect to other world players. But as well as rules we need a genuine industrial policy that will rapidly enable our companies to use EU structures and services, without too great a dependence on American Big Tech or at least collaborating on an equal footing. A strategy is also needed that involves not only companies, but universities, research institutions, European data centres and large computing centres, such as Leonardo, the National Supercomputing Centre of the Bologna Technopole.
We need investment. We need technologies. But we also need culture and language, in accordance with European values (writing about it in last week’s blog, “Talking again about humanism, research and culture”). Because it is precisely our countries, on the firm foundation of their polymathic tech culture and appetite for freedom and sustainable development, that can – more and better than the US and China – bring together different expertise and knowledge to establish algorithms written using the multidisciplinary skills of engineers and philosophers, economists and cyberscientists, physicists and jurists, statisticians and sociologists. This includes critical thinking which contemplates not only the practical effects, but also the ethical implications arising from the new frontiers of knowledge.
The goal is an artificial intelligence, including generative AI, that doesn’t crush the human person beneath the “dominion of technology”, but actually unleashes their energies and creative imagination. That’s a humanistic project, in fact, in the style of Leonardo.
(Image Getty Images)
What if there were a European Artificial Intelligence, a system able to stand up to the current dominance of the US and China? What if there were a structure of algorithms, codes, networks, services, data centres and mechanisms resulting from collaboration, in Brussels, between Paris and Berlin, Rome and Madrid, Amsterdam and of course the cities of other EU member states, perhaps even convincing London to finally set its Euroscepticism aside and join the club?
We could give it a name charged with symbolic values: ‘Montaigne’, ‘Kant’, ‘Marie Curie’ or – why not? – ‘Leonardo’, the archetypal and best-known “Renaissance man”, with his multifaceted polymathic tech culture steeped in humanistic knowledge, a sense of beauty and pioneering disposition in the field of scientific knowledge. That way, we could tell the world that the Vitruvian Man and the drawings in the Codex Atlanticus, already considered part of the heritage of humanity, are outstanding contemporary examples of a world that looks to the future, signs of Humanism which is now taking the form of “Digital Humanism”: the human person at the centre of everything, machines at his service (offering a reassuring response to Martin Heidegger’s fears and, in Italy, those of Primo Levi and Italo Calvino in his prophetic Six Memos for the Next Millennium). What if intelligence, including AI, were guided towards performance, performing well, and doing good, at the service of the public’s rights and needs (starting with critical awareness, research and good information) and the competitive needs of European companies?
We live in a restless, multipolar world, marked by political and economic balances that are fragile as never before, subjected to deterioration and damage of every kind, from environmental catastrophes to pandemics, wars and rising social tensions. The old bipolar order (the balance of atomic terror between the US and USSR) broke down 35 years ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a new balance shows very little sign of appearing on the horizon. Globalisation dominated by rampant, rapacious finance is over; “regional” neo-globalisation is seeking a more stable order. The future, in short, is uncertain as never before.
And today, right here in Europe, we know that the system of values and interests that has inspired our shared journey (in summary, an ability to maintain a combination of liberal democracy, the market and welfare, i.e. freedom, well-being and social inclusion) is in serious danger of entering a crisis.
The US and China are moving along conflicting, divergent paths (without, however, renouncing the possibilities of dialogue and exchange). The autocracies, starting with Putin’s Russia, are presenting menacing faces. Sovereignism and populism, like a termite infestation, also threaten to corrode the foundations of our democracies. Demographic imbalances exacerbate the entire situation.
In short, Europe – an economic giant, a rich market with its 450 million inhabitants, cradle of civilisation – sees a bleak horizon ahead.
Out of this awareness comes the idea that the EU must turn a new page in its history, establish a new political and institutional path (with majority governance), make the decision of massive investment in its future. The main topics are precisely security and defence, in addition to that of sustainable development. We are also well aware that defence and security also mean energy, scientific research, the digital economy and – as we were suggesting – European Artificial Intelligence. These are all fundamental questions that we hope will be at the heart of political debate in EU member states, ahead of the vote in June to renew the European Parliament and determine the structures and programmes of the future European Commission.
On the other hand, they’re questions that call for massive investments, able to keep pace with the massive public spending injection of the US and financial strategies of China.
There are reassuring signs from Brussels, in this final period of the legislature. One example is a “European Defence Industrial Strategy”, which will be discussed at the end of February and may be financed by an EU fund that can raise resources from the markets. This would be a new fund, following the positive experience of the SURE social-assistance funds for workers put in difficult Covid-induced economic situations and Next Generation EU for the reforms and investments needed for European recovery and modernisation, from which Italy has received the most resources.
“Eurobonds and more resources for common military spending,” says EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking of the need for “a €100 billion fund” (La Stampa, 17 February). “Common debt, starting with defence, is possible today,” comments Francesco Giavazzi, an economist with a keen eye on European prospects (Corriere della Sera, 18 February). “An EU Defence Commissioner would be an important step in strengthening Europe,” maintains Roberto Cingolani, CEO of Leonardo, an Italian company that is also strategic within the military sector (Il Foglio, 17 February).
Donald Trump’s threats to break the current balance of NATO if elected to the White House, leaving Europe defenceless against Putin’s aggression, were only the latest wake-up call. And even if the idea of common defence meets with resistance from governments and military structures in single countries (France and Germany, first and foremost), the Eurobarometer reveals that EU citizens are ahead of their politicians: 77% of Europeans say they are in favour of common defence and 66% say we need more funds. Such a defence also involves cyber issues, and needs to process data efficiently, identify responses and organise countermeasures – all areas where artificial intelligence is essential.
The rationale for a common EU Fund for energy and strategic raw materials is similar, and indeed for an AI Fund.
So we need resources, political strategies and rules, as well as a truly fundamental cultural choice about what characteristics a European AI must have.
It’s a long, narrow road. The US is navigating within a context characterised by the wealth and power of Big Tech, dominant thus far, but also within a framework of liberal values. China employs massive public resources, solid technologically aggressive human capital, the power of determined dirigisme and party discipline.
So what about Europe? The EU boasts the world’s first systemic regulation of Artificial Intelligence (expert jurist Giusella Finocchiaro writes competently about this in the pages of Quali regole per l’Intelligenza Artificiale, Il Mulino) and its experts are clear about the need for a “multilateral approach” with respect to other world players. But as well as rules we need a genuine industrial policy that will rapidly enable our companies to use EU structures and services, without too great a dependence on American Big Tech or at least collaborating on an equal footing. A strategy is also needed that involves not only companies, but universities, research institutions, European data centres and large computing centres, such as Leonardo, the National Supercomputing Centre of the Bologna Technopole.
We need investment. We need technologies. But we also need culture and language, in accordance with European values (writing about it in last week’s blog, “Talking again about humanism, research and culture”). Because it is precisely our countries, on the firm foundation of their polymathic tech culture and appetite for freedom and sustainable development, that can – more and better than the US and China – bring together different expertise and knowledge to establish algorithms written using the multidisciplinary skills of engineers and philosophers, economists and cyberscientists, physicists and jurists, statisticians and sociologists. This includes critical thinking which contemplates not only the practical effects, but also the ethical implications arising from the new frontiers of knowledge.
The goal is an artificial intelligence, including generative AI, that doesn’t crush the human person beneath the “dominion of technology”, but actually unleashes their energies and creative imagination. That’s a humanistic project, in fact, in the style of Leonardo.
(Image Getty Images)