Europe must not fall behind. Word of Emmanuel Macron which on Wednesday 21 June will take the field in person in Paris to sponsor the take-off of Mistral, the first European response to the excessive power of the Big USA in matters of artificial intelligence which, as already happened in the days of the Internet, has already placed an almost unbridgeable financial mortgage on the design of the future. In this regard, it is enough to note that all the ten Big Techs present in the Fang Plus index, from Microsoft to Nvidia or Alphabet, already have a hand in AI or are about to do so: from chips to self-driving cars to robots that perform surgeries, artificial intelligence is helping to profoundly transform every aspect of our daily lives.
The newborn and promising French startup Mistral Ai
A new adventure watered with dollars that threatens to relegate Europe to a subordinate position: in 2023 there were investments in the States for 25 billion dollars, six times Europe's. For this Macron looks with great interest at Mistral takeoff, an artificial intelligence start-up launched by three young people from Meta and Google who, after collecting 105 million euros in their debut for four weeks, are already worth 240 million today. In short, stuff from Silicon Valley. But we are only at the beginning, promises the French president who last week announced a further package of 500 million euros for the development of artificial intelligence in France with the aim of contributing to the birth of technological champions of global reach.
Macron wants to make France a "champion" in the field of AI
"We have to bring out between five and ten clusters for 500 million euros, to have two or three poles of excellence" at a global level, declared the French president on a visit to the Salon VivaTech in Paris alongside Cedric O, former secretary of the innovation, today one of the great godfathers of Mistral”. “In the artificial intelligence sector – Macron explained in a tweet – I want France to be champions and yes cutting-edge positions of this new industrial revolution”. But a lot will be played around the future of Mistral, the result of three brains back home snatched from Mark Zuckenberg: Timothee Lacroix e Guillaume Lampe and Man, one of the pioneers of Deep Mind. The three, in their early thirties, have launched a more than courageous challenge: within a year or even less, Mistral will develop a language model for artificial intelligence a lot more effective and richer than Open Ai, the Gpt Chat application. To believe it are some of the most illustrious names in technology and finance, from the former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt to Xavier Niel of Iliad. But the real news is that the next round of financing will involve Bpifrance, or rather the CDP beyond the Alps, just to underline the strategic nature of the initiative, which aims at an historic goal; one billion euros in funding, a figure never reached by a European start-up.
The new rules don't stop the race for artificial intelligence
A race that accelerates despite the perplexities about the power unleashed by the explosion of artificial intelligence that has certainly not left Europe indifferent. Indeed, the European Parliament it just has approved the AiAct, the EU regulation for Artificial Intelligence, or the first document in the world designed to impose on technologies such as Chat Gpt (the jewel that is dragging Microsoft to the stellar value of 2.900 billion dollars) "respect for EU laws and fundamental values and to fight digital discrimination by preventing disinformation and the use of deep fakes”.
Bad new rules seem to have had the effect of accelerating the commitment of the countries of the Old Continent, "If Europe wants to be a protagonist in this field - commented Mensch - it cannot limit itself to dictating the rules, useful indeed necessary but which must not be too rigid: it depends on the interests of customers and investors”. It is the thesis of the French government but also of Rishi sunak, the British prime minister who has just launched the “UK 2030” programme: his future well-being depends on how much science and technology we will be able to mobilize in these years. and theItaly? There is no shortage of excellence (see for example Abacus, which uses artificial intelligence to improve the yield and quality of agricultural production) nor the attention of companies: 61% of the system has launched initiatives in the AI field. Perhaps, however, an effort from the public hand could be decisive.
