Artificial intelligence between European limits and energy constraints. Dialogue between Aresu and Benanti
Who was there and what was said at the presentation of Alessandro Aresu's book, “Geopolitics of artificial intelligence”, at Luiss
Europe has a "narrative" problem about artificial intelligence which spreads the false belief that the rules for innovation coincide with the AI Act.
“The problem is talking only about the Ai Act”, i.e. the law that regulates the development and use of systems based on this technology, “when there are so many legal provisions on innovation”. Alessandro Aresu said this during the presentation of his latest book – Geopolitics of artificial intelligence , published by Feltrinelli – which was held on 17 February at the Luiss School of Government , introduced by Giovanni Orsina.
“Why don't we talk about visas, about rules to attract talent, instead of just about regulation?”.
EUROPEAN INNOVATION IS FINANCED BY NON-EUROPEAN CAPITAL
Europe, however, has at least one other problem – a “weakness factor”, Aresu called it – when it comes to artificial intelligence: “Innovative European companies obtain capital from outside Europe”.
This is the case of Arm , a British company that produces semiconductors, which is the most important physical component for artificial intelligence: Arm is based in Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, but is owned by the Japanese holding company SoftBank, which participates with OpenAi and Oracle in the Stargate mega-project .
Similarly, DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs are British – based in London – but part of the US group Alphabet, which owns Google. DeepMind carries out research on artificial intelligence to apply it to the study of proteins; Isomorphic Labs, which spun off from DeepMind in 2021 to become its own company, uses artificial intelligence to discover new drugs.
According to Aresu, the biotechnology sector will be crucial to the future of artificial intelligence.
THE EUROPEAN UNION HAS IMPORTANT, BUT OLD COMPANIES
The European Union's main asset in the artificial intelligence supply chain is Asml : it is based in the Netherlands, creates machinery for the production of microchips and has a monopoly on equipment for extreme ultraviolet lithography, an extremely sophisticated process that allows the creation of circuits on very small scales.
There are other European companies that occupy relevant positions in the electronics supply chain , such as the German Zeiss (lenses) and Basf (chemicals), but they were founded in 1846 and 1865 respectively.
THE CENTRAL ROLE OF SOFTWARE
“You can't talk about microchips without talking about reality defined by software,” Paolo Benanti, professor of Technology Ethics at the Pontifical Gregorian University and president of the Commission on Artificial Intelligence for Information, a body of the Prime Minister's Office, said at the event. “ Software studies tell us that the objects of our everyday life are beyond our control. We have the software that powers the smartphone under license; we only have the hardware. It is a notable change”: that is, the use of electronic devices does not depend on the hardware but on the software, the ownership and management of which, however, remains with the company.
“The history of artificial intelligence is made up of capital and people: whoever has them manages to influence the AI landscape”. Regarding regulation, however, Benanti said that "the AI Act is one piece, but the rest is missing: we haven't said to ourselves what we want to do with artificial intelligence: the industrial application is missing, the standards are missing". As for ethics, this must not be "the substitute for the law".
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE NEEDS COMPUTATION AND ENERGY
The theologian and technology ethicist then moved on to talk about the "fight for the infrastructure" of artificial intelligence. “Computation,” he said, “is only part of the story: It has to match energy, which is what makes chips work. There is not only a competition between those who can provide the best performing chips, but also between those who can provide the energy to power them."
Referring to the recent summit on artificial intelligence in Paris, Benanti underlined how President Emmanuel Macron has leveraged the presence of nuclear energy in France to attract investments in artificial intelligence: the reactors, in fact, are capable of producing a lot of electricity at zero emissions, at low cost and continuously, satisfying the demand profile of data centers .
Continuing to think about the link between artificial intelligence and energy, Benanti spoke about Sam Altman's announcement on the next OpenAi language models, from Gpt-5 onwards, which will be equipped with modular reasoning capabilities: this means that the system will automatically modulate the amount of energy needed to respond to the user's query , using more or less computing capacity depending on energy availability.
But the issue of resource scarcity also characterizes the market of microchips for artificial intelligence: according to Benanti, "super-orders of Nvidia chips by private individuals serve to create scarcity on the market and therefore limit competition", hindering access to computing capacity. Nvidia is the clear dominant company in the AI processor market.
THE OTHER SPEAKERS
In addition to Aresu and Benanti, Sofia Hina Fernandes Da Silva Ranchordas, professor of Law & Policy of Innovation at Luiss, and Giuseppe Italiano, vice-rector for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Skills of the university, also spoke.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/aresu-benanti-geopolitica-intelligenza-artificiale/ on Tue, 18 Feb 2025 09:36:42 +0000.