On AI, von der Leyen sees glass half full in Davos

BRUSSELS — After years of talk about regulating artificial intelligence, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday reiterated that the technology also presents an opportunity.

During her special address at the World Economic Future (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, the Commission chief painted a remarkably starry-eyed tech future. Artificial intelligence and its "adverse outcomes" featured on the list of long-term risks in the WEF’s yearly Global Risks Report, published last week.

"AI is also a very significant opportunity, if used in a responsible way," von der Leyen said, calling herself a "tech optimist."

It was her cue to spotlight a Commission proposal — scheduled to land next week — that aims to pair European AI startups with the computing capacity of the Continent’s supercomputers.

She also highlighted the bloc’s competitive edge in industrial data. During this mandate, the EU adopted a bill to foster the flow of machine-generated data.

"We can train artificial intelligence on data of unrivaled quality, and we want to invest in this, and this is why we will provide European startups and [small and medium-sized businesses] with access to our own world-class supercomputers," von der Leyen said, comparing the EU’s proposal to what "Microsoft is doing for ChatGPT by running it on its own supercomputers."

Still, access to these supercomputers won’t be without conditions, Iliana Ivanova, the bloc’s innovation commissioner, told POLITICO in an interview out of Davos on Monday evening.

"The contribution of AI and supercomputing to increase" productivity and efficiency "are very clear," Ivanova said. But she added that it was necessary "to look at the ethical aspects" of such "projects."