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The European Union is courting the private sector as it looks to step up compute capacity for training large AI models. <\/p>\n
Giving a speech<\/a> at the AI Action Summit<\/a> in Paris on Monday, the EU\u2019s president, Ursula von der Leyen, talked up the potential of homegrown AI startups but said the region\u2019s developers must have access to powerful enough infrastructure to enable them to scale their innovations to fulfil the potential offered by the technology \u2014 so the bloc is looking at changing its model for supporting AI infrastructure. <\/p>\n The current high-level push to set up talent and computing hubs that leverage the bloc\u2019s existing supercomputing infrastructure<\/a>, which the EU brands as \u201cAI factories\u201d, are not enough, she suggested \u2014 saying so-called \u201cAI Gigafactories\u201d are needed to train \u201cvery large models\u201d.<\/p>\n Building that \u201cnext level\u201d of AI infrastructure will require private sector capital, she also said. <\/p>\n \u201cOur start-ups need resources to scale up and we are far from widespread adoption of AI in our economy and society. That is why we are moving to the next level. We want to expand our model of open cooperation to be able to host frontier innovation in AI,\u201d von der Leyen said.<\/p>\n \u201cAs AI requires massive computational capacity, the next step will be to launch AI Gigafactories. Very large data and computing infrastructures to train very large models. Similar projects have also been announced in the US, by leading AI players. But with our European Gigafactories, computational power won\u2019t be a monopoly of a few. It will be a service accessible to all,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n In the eve of the AI Action Summit opening on Monday, the French president unveiled a private sector AI investment package totalling around $112 billion<\/a> in the EU Member State. However, back in January<\/a>, the U.S.-based Stargate project pledged to commit up to $500 billion over four years to build out data center infrastructure with the aim of cementing U.S. leadership in AI. So the EU is clearly feeling the pressure to respond to the AI compute race as a bloc.<\/p>\n \u201cFor AI, we need the private sector to be fully involved in our gigafactories. And we need more capital to make it happen,\u201d added von der Leyen, saying the topic would be discussed at a closed door plenary meeting <\/em>at the summit today. <\/p>\n Switching briefly into sales pitch mode, she implied that Europe could attract capital for the next phase of AI infrastructure by merit of its tendency to take a collaborative, rather than competitive, approach to IP development \u2014 focused on pooling and sharing knowledge across Member States for public good. <\/p>\n \u201cI want to emphasise our approach to give researchers and startups a unique opportunity to access top-notch computing infrastructure. It will allow industries to cooperate and federate their data,\u201d she said, suggesting: \u201cIt will \u2014 for example \u2014 allow hospitals to safely train models based on images and genomic data they own. It will allow unprecedented advances in basic science and climate modelling.\u201d<\/p>\n The EU\u2019s planned AI gigafactories will \u201cbe open for the best talents,\u201d she argued.<\/p>\n