By akademiotoelektronik, 15/03/2022

Data and artificial intelligence: how Europe wants to catch up

Faced with the American and Chinese behemoths, Europe wants to build a "responsible" and "trustworthy" digital system to maintain its sovereignty. The European Commission unveiled its digital strategy this Wednesday, February 19 - a sector defined as a priority among the political orientations of the new President Ursula von der Leyen, until 2024.

On the basis of its first proposals, the Commission wants to carry out various consultations in order to present a final project by the end of the year. The legislative proposals will then have to be approved by the Member States and ratified by the European Parliament.

Creation of a "single data market"

Data sharing is envisaged as the cornerstone of this strategy. This is why the Commission proposes the creation of a "European data space and a single data market". In detail, it wishes to establish a new regulatory framework to authorize the free movement of data in the Union between companies. It also proposes to facilitate this sharing between private companies and public bodies.

"But we have learned from the past. Europe has a new era ahead of it, where the greatest production of data will come from the B2B market", with the development of new uses such as 5G or the multiplication of connected objects, for example. .

To "lead this race for big data", Europe therefore wants to bet on its industry. "Our society generates a considerable mass of industrial and public data, which will transform the way we produce, consume and live. I want European companies and our many SMEs to have access to this data and create value for Europeans, in particular by developing artificial intelligence applications", explains Thierry Breton in a press release.

4 to 6 billion euros for infrastructure

It remains to convince European companies to give access to their precious data - the regulatory framework should not be restrictive. The new rules will thus have to rule on "the governance of data, their accessibility and their reuse between companies, between companies and administrations, and within administrations", according to the Commission.

Who says data, says infrastructure. Currently, the cloud is in the hands of Amazon, Microsoft, the Chinese Alibaba, Google and IBM. These five players alone share nearly 77% of the global market share, according to a Gartner study published last July. To set up infrastructures, in particular in the cloud, the Commission hopes to obtain an envelope of 4 to 6 billion euros from 2022 - provisioned by Europe, the Member States and private companies. "The idea, among other things, is to federate national initiatives, such as the German cloud project Gaïa-X", specifies a European source familiar with the matter. By way of comparison, the world leader Amazon paid nearly $26 billion in 2019 (about 24 billion euros) for its simple cloud operating expenses.

Access to data, a sine qua non for AI

If better access to data is crucial, it is because it conditions the creation of artificial intelligence applications since this technology is based on the massive processing of data by algorithms. The European Commission therefore took the opportunity to publish a white paper on artificial intelligence on Wednesday. The latter is subject to consultation until May 19 (companies, unions, civil society, Member States, etc.).

The white paper is thus based on two main pillars: promoting innovation and developing the confidence of citizens and businesses in this technology. The Commission wishes to promote cooperation between States and the private sector to obtain "eventually a common annual budget of 20 billion euros dedicated to artificial intelligence" within the European Union. The creation of an innovation support fund, initially endowed with 100 million euros, is also under study.

Jumbled up, Brussels is proposing to create several world-class research centers and to launch digital innovation centers in each member state to help SMEs test and deploy artificial intelligence solutions.

Anais Cherif

5 mins

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