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In a race, the fast beat the safe, and AI is no exception.
Europe seems to have caught on and is now killing AI-blocking regulation – just like everyone else.
At last week’s Paris AI summit, Ursula von der Leyen boldly announced that Europe is joining the AI race, declaring that “global leadership is still up for grabs.”
Over in the US, Trump scrapped Biden’s executive order for safe and secure AI development and announced a €500 billion AI infrastructure project, entirely privately funded. Who needs rules when you have capital?
In the UK, Keir Starmer made a U-turn to go all-in on growth after focusing on AI regulation before the election. Even the authorities meant to keep companies in check now have to meet growth targets. In “a bid to boost growth” the previous Competition and Markets Authority chair was fired and replaced with an ex-Amazon executive after daring to investigate several AI partnerships.
It’s the same story elsewhere. India, Brazil, and other non-Western countries are competing to build “warm and regulation-free” environments for AI developments, reported Rest of World.
This is a classic prisoner’s dilemma. In theory, the world would benefit from safer AI standards. In practice, the first country to abandon them wins. Regulate, and you get left behind.
Europe got the memo. Now, it’s scrambling to scale back regulations and throw money at AI development.
In Paris, von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron and EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen touted again and again their ambitions to simplify the laws the EU has championed as the global gold standard for digital regulation.
Immediately after the summit, the Commission withdrew the AI liability directive supposed to complement the landmark EU AI Act, which itself faces an uncertain future amid simplification efforts.
And for anyone worried about new rules, fear not. “No AI regulations will come from the Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology in the next five years,” confirmed its head, Roberto Viola, in a panel today.
Macron announced France had attracted €109 billion in AI investments, while von der Leyen promoted a €150 billion private EU AI Champions initiative and announced billions of public European investments to stimulate further growth.
The reality is, AI changes too fast and cuts across too many sectors to regulate without causing legal uncertainty.
For years, the world has been free-riding on the EU, relying on it to absorb such uncertainty and benefit from the ‘Brussels effect’.
But now, as the bloc is fighting for relevance in a hostile geopolitical environment, it’s more than willing to abandon its role as the world’s regulatory floor and leave the prisoner’s dilemma unsolved.
The dilemma does have a solution: cooperation. But in Paris, the EU wasted its best chance to push companies to commit to safety frameworks and work towards international information-sharing and enforcement institutions.
Instead, it showed off its newfound hatred of growth-jeopardising regulation.
If even Europe doesn’t care anymore, why should anyone?
Roundup
EXCLUSIVE: Economy – The European Commission will propose increasing the guarantee available under ‘InvestEU’ programme and combining it with other “legacy programmes” to boost private and public investment, according to a draft of the second ‘Omnibus’ simplification package.
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France – Emmanuel Macron will travel to Washington, D.C. “next week” to meet with US President Donald Trump, French EU minister Benjamin Haddad said on Thursday, amid Trump’s new salvo of ever-more vicious attacks on Ukraine.
Poland – EU Commissioner for Budget Piotr Serafin and Polish EU Minister Adam Szłapka (Modern, EPP) called the findings of the OLAF investigation “shocking”. Poland will have to return €90 million for violations in the previous conservative PiS (ECR) government’s delivery of power generators to Ukraine.
Italy – In response to Italian President Sergio Mattarella’s recent comments comparing Russia to the Third Reich, the pro-Russian hacker group Noname057(16) has intensified its cyber campaign against Italy, executing multiple attacks over three consecutive days that have targeted critical financial and public infrastructure.
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