EU missing the boat on AI, jeopardising its future, Lagarde warns

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Europe is jeopardising its own future by missing the boat on artificial intelligence and must quickly remove obstacles that prevent the diffusion of this new technology, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Monday.

Firms in the U.S. and China are investing heavily in AI, generating a debate on whether this exuberance is fuelling a financial bubble or signalling a technological leap.

"With the United States and China ahead of the field, Europe has already missed the opportunity to be a first mover in AI," Lagarde said in a speech in Bratislava, Slovakia.

"We still bear the costs of having been slow adopters during the last digital revolution," the ECB president said. "We risk letting the wave of AI adoption pass us by and jeopardise Europe's future."

Unlike in the case of past technological waves, AI could spread faster and deliver tangible economic gains sooner, making it urgent for the 27-nation European Union to act.

However, simply buying AI solutions from established providers will not be enough because that will deepen Europe's reliance on foreign entities, Lagarde said.

"We must diversify critical parts of the AI supply chain and avoid single points of failure. In the foundational layers, such as compute capacity based on chips and data centres, we should maintain a minimum capacity."

The EU also needs to enforce interoperability and open standards to encourage competition, needs cheaper energy, more uniform regulation, and an integrated capital market to channel risk, Lagarde said.

(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; editing by Mark Heinrich)