Alex Petropoulos 🤠

I'm deeply concerned about Europe's future on AI. One of my biggest worries is our erosion of agency, our ability to stay relevant and fight for our values in a future where AI becomes a civilisationally important technology. Myself, @DadaJudith , @bakkermichiel and others have written a scenario to outline a potential future we worry we are on track towards. europe2031.ai Every optimistic and realistic path I can see for Europe runs through a central node - one where Europe has more leverage, more importance and more say. One where Europe grows more, builds more where it matters, and takes ownership over its resilience. Europe 2031 is a five-year scenario of the continent's slide into irrelevance: how AI is driving it, and what can still be done. The co-authors are researchers, scientists and investors who have advised European leaders, co-authored national AI strategies, built and funded these systems from the inside. We have no interest in hype and we deeply care about this continent. Europe 2031 ends with five concrete recommendations: - drastically more compute on European soil - an AI middle-power coalition - labour-market reforms - a bold position in robotics and industrial AI - and a positive vision of what AI can do for society. Europe can still change course if it finds the political will and the courage to engage in the most ambitious political and economic agenda the continent has undertaken in peacetime. I encourage you to read it if you have the time:

Elbridge is probably right that middle powers don't have a natural reason to align in general. However, an *AI* middle power coalition does have such a reason. Distinguishing between the AI and generic versions seems important, because the former seems much more tractable!

@pastasnack_e I just don't get his model of a voter base who would be happy letting in immigrants who are net negative contributors? You either only let in high earners, or don't give low earners benefits, this feels really simple and when I explain this to my lefty friends they agree?

Bit of an ideological Turing test here. Can Polanski really not think of *any* reason other than ‘cruelty’ that the government (annual deficit: £23bn) might want to stop spending billions per year on benefits for people who are not citizens?

@notanastronomer Lauren I have one of these an it's excellent. only problem is I'm too tall for my buritto :( hugs for Ur dad

so dad got some bad blood tests back, so I’m in the US earlier than planned. but at least someone on this flight is wrapped in a blanket that looks like a tortilla and has made themselves into a burrito: target.com/p/pavilia-burr…

@gnievchenko @grok Do a good faith beat case botec on the economics of this plz

@AlexTPet I guess in places like ports or depots that’s true But all that for 4 MWh from 115k trucks?

$24 mil raised for regenerative braking, but stationary. Wonder what I’m missing.

@FutureEconJacob @OscarSykes7 I wouldn't be surprised if many of the same barriers are the same

@AlexTPet @OscarSykes7 Tried this argument and it failed.. LNG terminals are easier to build than datacentres, they said!

Germany set up an LNG terminal in 10 months after the Ukraine war, which usually takes years, partly by skipping environmental review. When a Green minister was asked about potential harm to endangered porpoises, he said getting off Russian gas mattered more. Extremely badass

@OscarSykes7 microdosing hard times macrodosing strong men

@AlexTPet we need to create some more wars and pandemics to keep Europe on its toes

@OscarSykes7 same for vaccine taskforce!

@OscarSykes7 simultaneously bullish for Europe, but also baffling that we haven't taken the lesson from this and tried to apply it elsewhere

You essentially advocating with a 20 year old to share his political opinions to the massive audience I have is wildly irresponsible. Im very conscious of the influence I have, which is why I only speak about topics such as Looksmaxing, which I spent years of my life researching. More influencers need to humble themselves and realize that they are ignorant politically (or just generally fucking stupid).

Across "AI 2040: Plan A" and its supplements (160,000+ words), European countries are rarely mentioned. I don't think this is a huge mistake, but it makes it less obvious what European nations should do if they wanted to make Plan A more likely. Below are some thoughts on both the realism of Europe's actions as per AIFP's scenario, and what I think needs to happen for Europe to play a constructive role in a Plan-A-type scenario. Special Economic Zones and European Growth: - The scenario assumes Europe will see the same growth rates as the US and China (as they attract compute and industrial production). I think this might actually be possible for individual European nations. I don't think it entirely relies on bargaining power though—lots of it simply comes from Europe having the necessary complements to attract economic activity. - European nations have a strong interest in profiting from AI, making them more likely to allow AI-driven industrial activity within their borders (via SEZs). The European Union won't be of much help here IMO—up until now, they keep getting lost in sovereignty kayfabe. This should make you hopeful, however—too many people overindex on the EU's flawed incentives in predicting European futures. - Again, this is an argument for more talented Europeans to focus on national AI policy, not EU policy. Transparency and Slowdown: - European nations would like the transparency and slowdown parts of Plan A a lot. - On transparency, they would learn much more about what is happening inside the labs, not needing to rely on secretive labs or USG. - A slowdown would help them, both by allowing more equalized AI diffusion across frontier and laggard nations, and by enabling more companies to reach the frontier, reducing power concentration and AI prices. Mutually Assured Compute Destruction: - Without much compute of its own, Europe would give up a lot of bargaining power, and trust the US and China to stick to the plan. I'd be surprised if we end up in this world as it seems like the kind of extremely cooperative behavior the scenario only assumes for the US. If we live in a more flawed world, it seems good for Europe to host a meaningful amount of compute—enough to provide it some bargaining power, not so much that it could be misused in some catastrophic way. If we wanted Plan A, what should Europe do? - I think European nations that feel relatively secure could play *some* role in making something like Plan A a reality. - In the near-term, European nations need to find ways to get reliable AI access, and to profit from AI (by allowing AI integration across their economies), as both of those things increase the bargaining power of Europe. - On the other hand, it also means that Europe should neither call for a drastic slowdown right now, nor take overzealous regulatory action. Given the current administration, this will mostly make it more likely that the US harms Europe, putting the continent in a worse position to play a constructive role at a later time. - If Europe plays its cards right and ultimately feels more secure—and once we get a more collaborative US administration—having European nations be aware of something like Plan A (or whichever plan is closest to Plan A, while still being palatable to AI-aware leaders) seems like a very good thing.

The interview is behind a paywall, but you grab a 7 day free trial here if you are keen to watch it :) therestispolitics.com

Europe2031 goes mainstream! Super fun to join @matthewclifford, @RoryStewartUK and @bakkermichiel on @RestIsPolitics to talk about Europe's AI future, what it might look like if we don't sort things out, and what we can still do to fix things.

@adb0wen looking at superbonus and concluding "yeah let's do that" is crazy

@_AashishReddy (also congrats!)

@_AashishReddy goodness gracious why did you do 150 cats what a beast

University results! Could’ve been *much* worse

@ukdynamism very very very cool and necessary

The UK can once again be the most dynamic country in the world. Today we launch the UK Dynamism Fund, a new philanthropic fund to support the believers and the builders of UK dynamism. Apply now: ukdynamism.fund

@AishaKDown my only gripe is a de facto tax on data centre profits/revenues earmarked for local redistribution being framed as a bad thing. Seems good to tax data centres and for a chunk of that tax revenue to go to locals!

This is good from @AishaKDown. Given that grid connectivity is the biggest constraint to building data centres, it is bizzare that they weren't prioritised in growth zones. At the very least, grid spots should be auctioned off, so data centres pay for the resources they use.

@AishaKDown theguardian.com/technology/202…