TECH

UE announces €20 billion investment in AI acceleration and innovation

Recently announced by the European Commission, the plan aims to transform European industries into engines of acceleration and innovation in the field of AI, with measures and policies in five key areas, in addition to an investment of €20 billion for five gigafactories dedicated to the technology. The strategy announced by Ursula von der Leyen in February, during the AI ​​Action Summit in Paris, is now gaining more strength with the AI ​​Continent Action Plan. 

In a statement, the EU executive states that the AI ​​Continent Action Plan will boost the EU's innovation capabilities through a set of measures and policies in five key areas. The first focuses on building a large-scale data and computing infrastructure, focusing on the development of a network of AI Factories. According to the European Commission, 13 of these factories are already being built around the main European supercomputers. The AI ​​Gigafactories are also part of the plan, as announced in the Compass for Competitiveness. 

Driven by an investment of 20 billion euros, the five large-scale factories will be equipped with around 100,000 advanced AI chips, integrating data centers and high computing capacities to develop complex AI models. Furthermore, to stimulate private sector investment and strengthen the capacity of data centres and the cloud, the Commission will present a new legislative proposal. The Cloud and AI Development Act aims to triple the capacity of European data centres over the next five to seven years, with sustainability as a priority.

To boost innovation in AI, the action plan foresees the creation of Data Labs that, according to the EU executive, will be able to gather large volumes of high-quality data from different sources in AI Factories.

A Strategic Data Union will be launched in 2025, with the aim of creating an internal market that will allow AI solutions developed in the EU to be scaled up, the European Commission says.

In the coming months, Brussels intends to move forward with a new strategy designed to accelerate the adoption of AI by businesses, called the Apply AI Strategy, in which the European Innovation Infrastructure will play an important role, the Commission says.

Alongside measures to meet the growing demand for AI talent by stepping up recruitment programmes for professionals and researchers, the European Commission will launch a dedicated service for companies to help them comply with the rules of the AI ​​Act.

With the announcement of the action plan, Brussels is today opening two public consultations, which run until 4 June, on the Cloud and AI Development Act and the Apply AI strategy. An additional public consultation is also scheduled to open in May on the new EU data strategy.

mundophone