POLITICO: Vestager touts AI-powered vision for Europe’s tech future

18 February 2020

Industrial data is key to Europe’s ‘second chance’ at becoming a world leader in tech. Calls for European “technological sovereignty” have raised alarm bells among industrial players and free-trading countries, which fear that political control over competition decisions would lead to picking winners and protectionism.

As POLITICO first reported on January 29, the EU's executive arm wants to create a single market for data. The strategy relies on the notion of "data spaces" — or infrastructure for large pools of data that can be shared between sectors and companies, and improves access to European cloud providers.

To develop its vision of industrial data pools, the Commission is eyeing an investment of up to €6 billion that would be raised together with member countries and industry, according to a recent draft of the data strategy, obtained by POLITICO.

“If this is to be successful then we should not put our business-to-business AI in the same position as our business-to-consumer technology, having no single market,” Vestager said.

Europe wants to become the go-to place for high-quality data for artificial intelligence.

Ensuring that the data feeding artificial intelligence applications is up to par and shared freely will allow Europe to develop the kind of technology that will help it take on America and China.

But the package that will be unveiled on Wednesday will only be part of a larger puzzle in Europe’s quest to create prosperity through digitalization, Vestager said.

Full article on POLITICO


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