Comment by Epa095
6 days ago
Software in general, AI as well, is a rich get richer market. The big American companies can afford to (and very much do) scoop up European talents and upcoming European companies. And if they don't want to buy them, they can undercut them to bankruptcy. We live in a colony economy, with human capital as the raw produce, and it all gets funneled to the USA.
The only way to avoid this is to stop playing the game as it is today, and start using proper industrial policy to build up a competitive industry (like China did). There has been no appetite for that the last decades, but Trump is making it completely clear that the state is back, and Europe is slowly acknowledging it as well.
Europeans should thank Trump for that. Digital sovereignty became a major theme mostly because his hollow head could not comprehend the previous strategy.
I would say it is mostly a money problem rooted in the culture. VC funding is not nearly as common in Europe. Not that many people are willing to risk serious money the way US corporations do, or even ordinary Americans through the stock market. Banks will never lend you money for this.
That itself makes it really easy to poach great engineers. You can earn very good money in Europe, but usually not the best money.
If the EU wanted to pour billions into AI labs, national governments would immediately start fighting over which country should host them. These petty disputes, coming from hundreds of years of Europeans killing each other, are one of the main things holding them back.
I believe that in the end, the strategy will be to watch what worked and what did not work for the Americans, then simply copy it. But Europe was never really cut off from crucial technology before, so I'm curious if that will have any interesting solution.