Optimistic that the EU can strengthen its presence and compete with the US and China in artificial intelligence, appeared Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, speaking to “Naftemporiki”, on the sidelines of the 25th Brussels Economic Forum.
Brussels recognizes that the EU is lagging behind the US and China in a complex geopolitical and economic environment, however, Virkkunen, speaking to “N”, expressed the belief that the race is not over.
“We believe that at least in artificial intelligence the race is not over. We can rely on our own strengths. We are strong in both research and scientific staff. We have thousands of startups, about 7,000, developing AI. If we invest in them, we will definitely boost innovation in the sector. In a year, we expect to have 5 times more computing capacity than today. One of our supercomputers is in Greece, after all,” Virkkunen noted, referring to the National Supercomputer “Daedalus”.
Simplification
The European Union’s landmark rules on artificial intelligence are only a year old, but Brussels has already stated that it is open to modifying them amid pressure from the market, but also the United States.
The EU is of course cautious about the new terminology and that is why there is talk of simplifying the rules and not relaxing them: “We have heard the public statements of US government officials, but in the EU we have our own values.”
“We want to simplify the regulations, but not for the sake of the big ‘players’, but mainly to facilitate SMEs. Large industries have the resources both for development and for dealing with bureaucracy.”
