> I watched a panel on AI (machine learning) at a conference hosted by the European Commission.
> 9 people on the panel
> Everyone agreed that the USA was 100 miles ahead of EU in machine learning and China was 99 miles ahead
> In any case, everyone agreed that in the most important technology of the 21st century, the EU was not on the map.
> The last person on the panel was an entrepreneur.
> He noted that the EU had as many AI startups as Israel (a country 1/50th the size) and, btw, two thirds of those were in London that was heading out the door due to Brexit.
> So basically the EU had 1/3 the AI startups of Israel (this was a few years ago)
> So the panel discussion turned to "What should the EU do?"
> And the more or less unanimous conclusion (except for the entrepreneur) was "We are going to build on the success of GDPR and aim to be the REGULATORY LEADER of machine learning"
> I literally laughed out loud
> Being the "Regulatory Leader" is NOT A REAL THING.
> Imagine it is the early 20th century and imagine that cars were invented and that the USA and China were producing a lot of cars.
> The EU of today would say "Building cars looks hard, but we will be the leader in STOP SIGNs"
> This is defeatism, this is surrender, this is deciding to be a vassal state of the United States and China in the 21st century.
> The EU is already a Web 2 vassal to the US tech companies (none of its own, so it has to try to limit their power)
- The U.S. was one large, unified market. Europe was fragmented, linguistically and economically.
- The Cold War meant a lot of DOD money was going into computing and technology, with a lot of it concentrated in Silicon Valley (initially at Berkeley and Stanford, and the national labs in the area).
- Later on there was research being done into networking (to help ensure redundancy in the event of a nuclear war).
So you now have an area with a rich talent pool (and pipeline), with the appropriate manufacturing facilities, and transportation infrastructure for export. In addition, as the industry was maturing, financial regulations were loosened (remember, many banks used to only operate in one state), so access to capital was easier.
I'm here wondering if they split the companies into two buckets (or the article is missing details). Companies with 45 millions + users and companies with less than 45 millions users.
So a company that has 22 million users will have the same regulatory burden as one that has 10? That's insanity.
