Richard Windsor: The time for the EU to rethink the rules is running out…regulators need to rip up their nascent rules which are causing delays and start again
Richard Windsor PhD runs Radio Free Mobile, designed to “entertain as well as inform” which it does. As a Brit I’ve always hoped this as an irreverent nod to Lord Reith’s alleged description of the BBC’s role as a public service – to “inform, educate, and entertain”.
This blog makes gripping if rather depressing reading – all those impressions you’ve already formed about Europe’s laggard status in AI set out in actual numbers: Windsor comments, “the USA’s GDP is only 50% larger than Europe’s while its AI position remains a rounding error compared to the USA” and “In the last 10 months, Europe’s response has been to delay the implementation of the rules that have been causing all the trouble, as opposed to ripping the whole thing up and starting again”.
He elaborates, “The problem with the EU AI Act is that it seeks to regulate an industry that does not yet exist, and because no one knows how it will work, it is impossible to set appropriate rules for it.
[Editor: I took the liberty of adding the couple of hyperlinks to the excerpt below.] Here’s the start (the whole thing is in bullet points):
• The fact that Mistral is rolling out 13,800 GB300 chips in Europe is newsworthy [announced on 30 March], is a sign that AI in Europe remains far behind…the USA, China and the Middle East, mostly as a result of an uncertain and generally hostile regulatory environment.
• Mistral, the French full-stack AI services provider, has raised $830m in debt financing that will go towards its plan to build 200MW of data centre capacity by the end of 2027.
• This amounts to roughly $10bn of capital expenditure, of which roughly half has been allocated to building facilities in France and Sweden. Mistral is pretty much Europe’s only home-grown AI platform contender and its best hope to have a relevant position as the AI industry emerges and matures.
• Almost all of the other capacity being rolled out in Europe belongs to the US hyperscalers or non-European neo-clouds (except Nebius).
• By contrast, the USA will roll out 13GW of capacity in 2026 (65x Mistral’s 2027 target), and the Middle East will bring 400MW in line in 2026, which is double Mistral’s 2027 target.
Read the rest here, which explores why it matters.
You can also read what the CEO of Europe’s largest operator group, Deutsche Telekom, had to say on the subject of European regulation last week. It doesn’t do much to cheer either.
