EU Eyes a New Tech Champion, But It's No ChatGPT
Europe is where ChatGPT gets regulated, not invented. That's something to regret. As unhinged as the initial results of the artificial-intelligence arms race may be, they're also another reminder of how far the European Union lags behind the US and China when it comes to tech.
How did the land that birthed Nokia Oyj and Ericsson AB become the land that tech forgot? Some blame the acronyms synonymous with Brussels red tape — GDPR, DMA, DSA — even though the Googles of this world look far more spooked by ChatGPT than any EU fine. Tech lobbyists are fuming at EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who wants incoming AI rules toughened to rein in a new breed of chatbots.
But maybe Breton's old company, Atos SE, is a better example of the deeper malaise plaguing European tech. Aerospace champion Airbus SE has proposed an investment in Evidian, the big-data and cybersecurity unit that Atos plans to spin off this year. The potential deal has been presented as a boost to European tech “sovereignty” through growth in cloud and advanced computing.
One look at Atos's share price will reveal that the company is a symptom of, not a remedy for, Europe's tech decline. The company doubled revenue and employees in the 2010s through acquisitions, but was too slow to move to the cloud and away from older IT infrastructure. Meanwhile, the likes of Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. — the companies that are in a race to get chatbots with a personality into every home — splashed huge amounts of cash to grow their own cloud businesses and, together with Amazon. com Inc., control two-thirds of the global market.
The R&D gap between US and Europe looks relevant here. Alphabet and Microsoft were among the world's three biggest corporate spenders in
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