In July 2024, European Commission President von der Leyen put a CERN for AI at the heart of her vision for addressing Europe’s ‘hamstrung’ competitiveness. According to her assessment, the investment needed to compete in the market of increasingly valuable, large-scale, and general-purpose AI models is too large for any single European government or company. In her words:
“We must now focus our efforts on becoming a global leader in AI innovation. I will propose to set up a European AI Research Council where we can pool all of our resources, similar to the approach taken with CERN.”
In this roundtable lunch discussion, we are attempting to answer the question of what such a resource pooling initiative should look like to best serve the EU’s economic security. More specifically, we look at the following questions:
- What kind of AI should such an institute aim to develop?
- What would be the key resource needs of a CERN for AI?
- How should such an institute be governed?
- What role could the private sector play?
- Who could participate in the development efforts?
- How should the benefits of such a CERN for AI be distributed?
Join senior AI policy professionals from the public sector, industry, academia, and civil society to explore these questions and more over a lunch discussion. This event is by invitation only.
