The irruption of Chatgpt, a little more than two years ago, was the last proof that artificial intelligence (AI) was not a chimera. Then they would join the Microsoft race, with Co -cilot; Google, with Gemini, and so many others. Last month, a small and then unknown Chinese firm, Depseek, broke molds with a free and open source tool that showed that multimillion -dollar investments are not needed to fully enter the AI race. Today, only today, the European Union takes the step with its first sector strategy: 200,000 million euros and the desire to become “the continent of the AI”.
The reasonable doubt is whether it is too late. In spite The best scientific ecosystems in the world, the technological gap with the United States and China has not stopped widening. An especially visible lag in the so -called critical technologies, calls to displace the current development border: AI itself, supercomputing and microchips.
Europe, including countries such as the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway, placed last year about thirty universities among the 100 best in the world in the prestigious classification of Shanghai. It also has the CERN, the largest particle accelerator. But only 11 of the 100 largest technological companies on the planet host their confines; Two of them, in Switzerland. None is among the top 10 by market value and only four are among the 50 largest. The American domain is overwhelming. The first, the German SAP, is thirteenth.
More data: the 27 EU countries add up to just over 100 Unicorns – Young technological companies that exceed 1,000 million dollars of valuation – with India stepping on the heels. China remains, with more than 170; Even further, USA, with almost 660. The result of this dangerous cocktail is that the EU depends on third parties for 80% of the products, services and digital infrastructure it requires.
The reasons for the disconnection between science and technology are multiple. The first is the lowest investment in research and development (R&D): the EU today all more than 2.2% of its gross domestic product is used to this task, far from the 3% goal since time immemorial. The United States exceeded that threshold just more than five years ago and already ride over 3.5%, a figure that only reaches one of the 27 countries of the block (Sweden). South Korea, leader along with Israel, is already 5%. And both Japan and China march far ahead of the twenty -seven. In absolute numbers, the gap between the twenty -seven and US is from Aúpa: almost half billion (or euros) a year.
A market that is not unique
They do not accompany the circumstances. It rows against the everlasting market fragmentation and the greatest difficulty when financing its growth. Also the greatest regulation, a blessing for the end user, much more protected, but that – according to one of the great voices of the industry, the European digital employer – puts community technological technological technological ones in the face of their US peers and Chinese. An invitation to make the leap to Silicon Valley as soon as they can do it.
It also affects the escape of brains in applied technology: there are many who in recent decades have fallets to cross the Atlantic, attracted by salary and professional perspectives. American technology and the research departments with the greatest glue in their universities not only nourish the best heads in Asia (especially India), but also in Europe. There is nothing more to look at your command paintings.
Alarm voices have multiplied in recent months. In it Draghi report, The former president of the European Central Bank (ECB) and Salvador of the common currency in their great existential crisis called to lift 800,000 million euros with common debt emissions to recover the lost time and relaunch the competitiveness of the twenty -seven. “We still have many strengths, [pero] We are clearly behind, ”said the Italian economist. They are saved from burning four names, all rich and the north third: Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands, which do sneak among the ten best in the world for competitiveness and talent in the classifications of IMD and INSEAD BUSINESS SCHOOLS .
The average technology trap
It is not only that Europe invests less, but invests in less pointers. The list of private investors in R&D, as Mario Draghi himself recalled, has been dominated in Europe by automobile companies, “as in the US in the early 2000s, when cars and the pharmaceutical industry still dominated ” Today, their place is occupied by Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and Google. All technological and all Americans.
The old continent has fallen into what the Nobel Prize in Economics Jean Tirole and also economists Daniel Gros and Clemens are call “medium technology trap.” The propensity of European companies to invest in high -tech sectors is, in short, infinitely lower than that of their US peers.
“Although digital technologies are a vital source of innovation, the greatest growth of productivity in Europe continues to come from medium technology,” concluded Bert Colejn, Edse Dantuma and Diederik Stadig, analysts of the Dutch Bank Ing, in a recent monograph. Something that is not negative per sebut that it is if they are not able to stimulate the sectors at the forefront. “We must reduce regulatory barriers and improve access to capital to successfully carry technological innovations to the market.” The good new one is that new -wedge technologies, such as photonic and artificial intelligence, are “far from being fully developed and offer important growth opportunities.” An idea that, now, seems to penetrate Brussels.
