I'm deeply concerned about Europe's future on AI. One of my biggest worries is our erosion of agency, our ability to stay relevant and fight for our values in a future where AI becomes a civilisationally important technology. Myself, @DadaJudith , @bakkermichiel and others have written a scenario to outline a potential future we worry we are on track towards. europe2031.ai/ Every optimistic and realistic path I can see for Europe runs through a central node - one where Europe has more leverage, more importance and more say. One where Europe grows more, builds more where it matters, and takes ownership over its resilience. Europe 2031 is a five-year scenario of the continent's slide into irrelevance: how AI is driving it, and what can still be done. The co-authors are researchers, scientists and investors who have advised European leaders, co-authored national AI strategies, built and funded these systems from the inside. We have no interest in hype and we deeply care about this continent. Europe 2031 ends with five concrete recommendations: - drastically more compute on European soil - an AI middle-power coalition - labour-market reforms - a bold position in robotics and industrial AI - and a positive vision of what AI can do for society. Europe can still change course if it finds the political will and the courage to engage in the most ambitious political and economic agenda the continent has undertaken in peacetime. I encourage you to read it if you have the time:

In our scenario, frontier-model export controls were a 2028 event. It took two days for it to happen 😢. The most capable US models are now legally off-limits for non Americans. The silver lining is that it's getting very hard for European policy makers to keep ignoring this.

This should be a warning shot for all middle powers: - Your access to frontier AI systems is not guaranteed. - You need to build and pool your leverage to secure access. - A failure to do so is a threat to your R&D, economic and defensive competitiveness

In the morning, European citizens will wake up and find their access to Claude Mythos/ Fable gone. Nobody asked us. Nobody had to. We wrote Europe 2031 precisely for this moment.

The UK commentariat will spend this week deluded about the Anthropic situation. “It’s just Trump.” “It’s a one-off.” “We can build our own.” “We don’t want or need crappy American AI anyway.” None of it holds up. US has been using AI as a geopolitical lever since 2022. Chip controls, model weight restrictions, Chip Security Act embedding trackers directly into hardware, and now model restrictions. The direction of travel is clear. The UK has four AI Growth Zones, two without delivery partners, and OpenAI paused its Stargate UK data centre in April. Powering a data centre here costs four times what it does in the US. It is illegal to build LLMs that could compete with Claude because we cannot train models in the UK under our copyright laws. The idea we will build our own infrastructure under business as usual is unrealistic. We need to adopt. We need the productivity gains. Debt servicing costs are at historic highs, the tax burden is already at a 70-year peak, and the OBR’s long-run projections assume some productivity recovery. If professional services (the one sector generating real trade surplus) gets automated away by American AI while UK firms lag on adoption, the fiscal math becomes genuinely dire. Under current trajectories, we will arrive late, dependent on foreign infrastructure, with no domestic capability and no leverage. Nobody is taking this seriously enough and I’m feeling despondent.

This is, perversely, good news for Britain, Australia, Japan, Europe, and other countries being cut off that would once have seen themselves as close allies of the United States. It shows us what the future may hold if AI is the strategically and economically decisive technology of the 21st century and is controlled by the US and China. It is good news because *it may be happening early enough to give us time to act.* I think this will be rescinded pretty soon, but it’s a sign of things to come. In a future where frontier models cannot be used outside the US, our industries and economies will fall behind and American businesses may not be able to operate overseas. We won’t be able to defend ourselves militarily with defence systems built on obsolete software. Europe 2031 is a good scenario of what a future like this could mean: europe2031.ai Some of the things we need to do are ‘no regrets’ measures we should do anyway. But some are genuinely costly and risky. We need cheap electricity – powered by gas, coal (this is costly, coal is very bad), deregulated nuclear fission – whatever can provide *cheap, reliable, 24/7* power. This almost certainly excludes wind power, which is enormously expensive and unreliable. We need projects to be able to connect to the grid in days rather than years by paying for fast-track connections. We need to make it incredibly easy to build data centres, with the property taxes retained locally and hypothecated for local tax cuts so there is some direct benefit for locals. This doesn’t need to be nationwide. We need to create new regulatory regimes for innovative businesses that give them the right to hire and fire staff with ease. The difficulty and cost of firing staff is one of the main reasons Europe has fallen behind so badly. We need to create a parallel employment regime that companies and workers can opt in to: worksinprogress.co/issue/why… Even though I think it will probably fail, I think we should probably try to create a good, non-American frontier AI lab. I am quite pessimistic about this – even extremely well-resourced, innovative software companies are struggling to do this. But the stakes are so high that not trying seems foolish. One thing that might work in our favour is the number of brilliant AI engineers who are not US citizens, who under the current export controls do not have access to Mythos/Fable even if they live and work in the US. What happens to Demis Hassabis, Ilya Sutskever, Andrej Karpathy, and the many other Europeans, Canadians, etc who are working on AI models in Britain and America who are affected by this? I do not think we should force our own companies to use model, because this would exacerbate their economic weakness – this lab should have to compete on an even playing field. I am deeply sceptical that this can work, but we cannot rule it out. If we do it, it has to be able to pay US salaries, operate without political constraints. worksinprogress.co/issue/how… It is cope to tell yourself that Trump is an aberration or that these export controls are a one-off. To repeat, I think these specific controls will be lifted quickly and it will be easy to move on and forget it happened. But this is a look into a potential future. Every one of us that is not a US citizen is at risk. The standard political divides do not apply here; the question is whether you grasp the enormity of AI as a technology. We have to act!

oh dear

What middle powers can do to increase their leverage over transformative AI:

Co-Author of Europe 2031 Alex (@AlexTPet) explains why countries shouldn't all compete on the same AI battleground: "The US can turn off all of Europe's F-35 fighters at an instant. If we switched off ASML machines, that would have quite a lagging effect." "You want to build up this portfolio of leverage options." "Some countries will want to build compute. Others might specialise in robotics, photonics or fusion." "You build up this collection of leverage into a coalition of possible middle powers." "Each individual country has to decide: this is my comparative advantage. How can I be important on AI?"

Very much worth a read, as I've set out in my own writing I share many of the concerns voiced here, even from a UK perspective. Its great to see more thinking on the uneven impacts of AI across economies. The scenario set out is somewhat a flip side of the one I've highlighted. It stems from US/China making compute scarce for everyone else rather than abundant for themselves. But the economic effects/outcomes are essentially the same. It becomes an existential threat to the European economy. We also share the same fundamental starting concern - that the UK and Europe have left themselves significantly exposed due to lack of compute, energy, & foundational model firms. Of course, their writing & storytelling is much more interesting & vivid than mine! 1/

Europe has a lot to lose in the current AI race, and it's worth examining how threats to middle-power sovereignty can result in unsafe outcomes. Such scenarios help illustrate why Europe must invest in AI initiatives that can either leapfrog the current frontier or offer critical components like safety and reliability.

do you think she has read the scenario yet?

Disturbing, informative, and plausible. Essential reading, especially for anyone who can help steer EU technology and growth policy.

Co-Author of Europe 2031 @AlexTPet says if Europe magicked a frontier lab onto the continent right now our regulatory environment would kill it: "If Anthropic moved to Europe today... within a month like our regulatory system would be crippling them and they'd be outcompeted." "You need like 10 years or five years of reforms to make the European tech sector able to grow." "You need to be like strategically deciding as a government: these are the technologies that are going to be like super important in 10 years time".

there is no option other than staring the grim reality in the face and accelerating immediately.

I want Europe to flourish and meaningfully compete with the United States and China I do not think Europe will flourish or meaningfully compete with the United States or China This provides a good picture of the continent’s current and potential near-future AI trajectory.

I don't think people in Europe (and the UK) are taking our technological (and therefore economic) divergence seriously enough. A few disparate datapoints: 1. Our compute is woefully behind; three American labs each operate more AI compute than all of Europe combined 2. OpenAI has paused Stargate UK (indefinitely); our energy costs and regulatory environment are actively driving frontier infrastructure away 3. Mistral reportedly considering acquisition by SpaceX; Europe’s most valuable AI company is struggling to get the necessary resources to compete 4. FluidStack cancelled plans to build in France and moved HQ from London to the US; a company founded in the UK, that signed an MOU with the French government, chose American capital and contracts 5. Project Glasswing launched as a coalition of US firms - the most powerful AI model ever built was shared with Americans first and Europeans are still negotiating access 6. A Trump executive order gives the US government up to 30 days of exclusive federal access before a model's public release, and a say in which 'trusted partners' can use it first (American strategic interests are being baked into the architecture of who gets access to frontier AI, and when) Those who wrote Europe 2031 are some of the few people taking this seriously. Well worth a read.

This was a good post though I think it is interesting how much vivid science fiction scenarios have become the new default format for policy papers & financial analysis for AI.

Europa reguliert die KI-Produktivitätsrevolution, während andere sie gestalten – um sich anschließend über schwindenden Wohlstand und Bedeutung zu wundern. Told you so! (Wir hatten einmal einen KI-Aktionsplan in Kooperation mit Frankreich…)

The returns to having a dynamic economy are going to sharply rise. (From europe2031.ai/)

Must read: Reads like gripping screenplay of a dystopian movie about a future dominated by AI where Europe’s only choice is between becoming an American protectorate or dependent on China. But the problem is, it could be a reality very soon, unless Europe gets its act together.