Calls from prominent US figures in the AI industry, including figures like Sam Altman and Elon Musk, to slow down the development of increasingly powerful AI systems are being met with skepticism and outright rejection from their European counterparts and policymakers.
European Firms Question Motives Behind AI Slowdown Calls
French AI startup Mistral AI was among the first to voice its suspicion, stating in a release that the risks associated with AI have been clear for months. The company suggested that some established market players might be using this moment to solidify their positions and influence regulations in their favor, potentially disadvantaging competitors.
Mistral AI, founded just three years ago, is considered a key European hope for developing advanced AI models independently and challenging the current dominance of US and Chinese tech giants. Europe’s current reliance on models developed by companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft has led many European businesses and industry insiders to express concerns about continued dependence on American technology firms.
“I think it’s purely self-serving,” commented Raphael Vulliemin, COO of Swiss privacy software firm Proton, at a tech event in Paris. “They just want to maintain the dependency that the rest of the world has on their services.”
Concerns Over Innovation and Market Access
Ben Brooks, Head of Public Policy at German AI startup Black Forest Labs, warned that imposing artificial barriers could stifle open innovation, particularly in cutting-edge or near-frontier AI research. “If you create a gap between the big AI labs and new entrants based on arbitrary thresholds, it will hurt open innovation in frontier or near-frontier fields,” Brooks cautioned.
Conversely, Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue, whose company is also US-based, argued against hitting the brakes on AI development. “Now is not the time to slow down, it’s time to accelerate,” Delangue stated. However, he did agree with another suggestion, originating from Altman, regarding the implementation of “independent auditors” within AI companies.
“Regulatory Capture” Fears Surface
Christian Stöcker, a professor of AI at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, described Altman’s proposal as a form of “regulatory capture.” He elaborated, “It’s no longer proper regulation if a few large companies decide for themselves what constitutes ‘dangerous,’ select the auditors, and then demand antitrust exemptions.”
EU and UK Focus on Regulation and Digital Sovereignty
European policymakers and industry groups have echoed these concerns. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen emphasized on September 16th that the EU’s landmark AI Act positions Europe to influence the global response to AI risks. The following day, September 17th, UK King Charles III convened a summit in Scotland with tech and AI leaders to discuss these critical issues.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire was direct in his criticism: “To ask everyone who is behind them to slow down so that they can continue to be first, I can see the self-interest there, of course.” Germany’s Digital Ministry noted that halting AI development is unrealistic, especially considering Europe’s pursuit of digital sovereignty. Daniel Abbou, head of Germany’s AI industry association, also stressed the need for Europe to focus on closing the technological gap: “For European companies, this debate is meaningless. We first need to catch up technologically.”
