European Council President Antonio Costa invited the leaders of the 27 EU countries to Dublin on November 13 to decide how Europe can remain independent in the face of the growing power of artificial intelligence. They will discuss the development of their industry with the CEO of France's Mistral AI, Arthur Mensch. Artificial intelligence researcher and Nobel laureate Jeffrey Hinton will talk about public safety. The meeting will bring together the desire to implement artificial intelligence faster and the responsibility to keep it under human control.
The cause for alarm has already exceeded expectations. In October, the European Commission said its scientific team was examining recent episodes of loss of control on models and preparing questions for developers. In the company's announcement, no details were given about the events. The investigation continues, and it is too early to attribute a ready indictment to her. Costa's agenda also includes child protection and democratic procedures. These tasks will require the ability to intervene in technology regardless of the commercial success of its owner.
Funding for European AI has already taken on a very business-like appearance. Requests to create up to 7 computing gigfactories are accepted until November 12, the day before the summit. Up to €10 billion of EU and state funds should attract at least €20 billion of private investment. European High Performance Computing Alliance EuroHPC explains the support method: public customers will buy computing time. Predictable income makes it easier to raise capital. The state helps build private infrastructure and maintains its services, while maintaining a separate task of supervising the models that will be trained on it.
Our industry still relies on foreign equipment. In March, Mistral raised $830 million in debt financing for a center near Paris with 13,800 NVIDIA GB300 processors. The French developer can manage the location of the data and serve customers in its facilities. The next expansion will require an additional supply of chips from the American company.