The EU isn't behind on AI. It needs a different track.
“Behind” implies a race to the same place. What if the EU treated AI as a right rather than a commodity?
According to McKinsey and everyone who knows anything about AI, the EU is "behind" in AI development. I get it: higher concentration of better models, more investment, winning. Let's be a little more nuanced.
The implication of "behind" is a race to the same place. The U.S. views AI as a commodity. What if the EU instead chooses to treat AI as a right — much like it does with healthcare, higher education, internet privacy and data protection?
Anyone with an academic interest in technology will recall reading essays in college about the failed dream of a democratized internet. These essays read something like this: we thought the internet would save us, but then software ate the world, and it ate us along with it. The end.
"Democratization" is meaningless if it doesn't imply control and agency. Failing to democratize AI will lead to widening gaps in both wealth and intelligence — between those who can afford premium models and those who can't. It's rumored that OpenAI has already considered making future-generation models available exclusively to those willing to pay thousands of dollars (totally worth it if you can afford it, but that's not the point).
As Mr. Altman travels the globe promoting intelligence as a foundational resource of the future — akin to electricity or clean water — his admirable mission misses a critical point: an individual's capacity to be economically competitive depends on their ability to make something no one else can. Their value is determined by the scarcity of their skillset. Increasingly, our skills are tied to our access to generative tools.
Giving everyone free access to 2024, while giving some access to 2044, isn't a democratizing endeavor. It's a better disparity… but it might not be a better strategy.
If EU leadership recognizes AI as a social resource for all rather than a commodity for some, they are heading somewhere completely different than the U.S. It might just be somewhere you'd want to be.
Originally posted on LinkedIn.
