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| Fri 8 November 2024 | View online
Estimated reading time: 8-9 minutes |
| Good day ,
Thank you for joining us for our daily Tech Pro briefing. Today, we are bringing you a roundup of the most important tech news from the EU and around the world. We will be taking a day off on Monday, along with the rest of Belgium.
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| | | | | Donald Trump’s re-election as US president should act as a wake-up call for Europe to become more self-reliant in tech, policymakers and stakeholders told Euractiv, as they tried to make sense of the next four years with him in the White House. Read more. |
| | The EU is far behind in AI-specialised computing and current plans may not be enough to catch up. Plans for AI Factories are “the wrong order of magnitude of investment,” said one expert. Read more. |
| | 🟡 Artificial intelligence |
| | The awkward consultation. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) hosted a stakeholder event this week to get views on its upcoming opinion on the use of personal data to train AI models. Stakeholders expressed dissatisfaction with how participation in the event happened, as sign ups were only open for a few hours. Council wants more work on AI. The Council of the EU adopted conclusions on an EU Court of Auditors report on Wednesday, saying the EU must “scale up investments in AI and facilitate access to digital infrastructure to be a globally competitive actor.” The Council proposes few concrete measures, instead asking the European Commission to increase information sharing and evaluation of current and new initiatives. Commission standardisation requests. The Commission will issue new standardisation requests on remote biometric performance and energy efficiency of AI models early next year, in addition to a request based on the Code of Practice for general-purpose AI systems to cover remaining obligations, MLexreported on Thursday. The UK’s assurance bet. The UK Department for Science Innovation and technology published its report on “Accelerating the growth of the UK's AI assurance market” on Wednesday. Instead of introducing ambitious regulation, the UK hopes to promote innovation and safety by accelerating technology that makes the AI systems safer, like quality assurance, governance and risk management systems. The “UK’s AI assurance market set to grow six-fold by 2035 unlocking more than £6.5 billion (€7.8 billion),” they said in a press release. Another infusion into Anthropic. Amazon is considering another multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic, The Informationreported on Thursday, citing on person familiar with the matter. National security. Anthropic and Palantir will partner with the US government to make Anthopic’s Claude models available for intelligence and defence operations, Palantir announced on Thrusday. Meta said it would make its Llama models available for US national security agencies in a Monday blog post.
Human rights assessment. The Law Commission of Ontario (LCO) and Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) published a Human Rights AI Impact Assessment (HRIA) framework based specifically on Canadian human rights law on Thursday. OpenAI goes physical. Former head of hardware and augmented reality projects at Meta Caitlin Kalinowski joined OpenAI to “bring AI into the physical world,” she said in a Tuesday LinkedIn post. Physical Intelligence. Startup Physical Intelligence that aims to create general-purpose robotics models raised $400 million from Jeff Bezos and others at a $2 billion valuation, The New York Times reported on Monday. “Right to learn.” In industry’s latest call to be exempted from copyright law, Microsoft and a16z shared policy ideas including “the right to learn”, saying “copyright law should not be co-opted to imply that machines should be prevented from using data—the foundation of AI—to learn in the same way as people.” GOV.UK Chat. UK’s chatbot building on OpenAI’s GPT-4o, “GOV.UK Chat,” will be available to advice 15,000 business users in a scaled-up trial, the UK government announced on Tuesday. Baidu AI glasses. Baidu is preparing to release a pair of glasses with built-in AI to challenge Meta’s Ray-Bans, Bloombergreported on Friday. |
| | | | First DMA fine. The Commission will levy the first-ever fine under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to Apple for failing to allow "app developers to steer users to cheaper deals and offers outside of the App Store,” Bloombergreported on Tuesday citing people familiar with the matter. The Commission also called on Apple to comply with DMA interoperability requirements in its iPadOS on Monday. UK gears up for its own DMA? The UK’s Competition Markets Authority (CMA) asked the Secretary of State to approve the digital markets competition regime guidance on Thursday. Smartphone glass under the microscope. The Commission opened a formal investigation on Wednesday against US firm Corning over allegations that it abused its dominant position on its production of break-resistant glass “used to protect the screens of handheld electronic devices.” |
| | | | Watered down. European leaders are set to agree on a significantly watered-down statement on the Union’s Competitiveness Deal in Budapest today, with key proposals relating to financial integration, the EU budget, and research expenditure stripped from European Council President Charles Michel’s ambitious original text. Read more
Zaharieva’s grilling. Commissioner-designate for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva said she would focus on fewer priorities, but little on which priorities she will concentrate on, when grilled by MEPs on Tuesday. A large majority of MEPs confirmed her, with only three votes against. Read more.
Largarde’s warning. President of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde warned in Paris on Tuesday against the political tendency to focus too much on protecting the EU against external competition to the detriment of maintaining competition internally. |
| | | | Sovereignty requirements, again. Tech lobby ITI repeated calls for the EU to “move away from” remove sovereignty requirements in a blog post on Thursday. Beware of Chinese hacks. The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sent an email on Thursday to ask employees to reduce the use of their corporate phones because of a Chinese hack of US telecoms infrastructure, TheWall Street Journalreported on Thursday. |
| | | | McGrath’s sober answers. Ireland’s candidate for the European Commission, Michael McGrath, took questions on tech policy and the rule of law, and other issues, from EU lawmakers at a hearing in Brussels on Tuesday. He was later confirmed by over two-thirds of of committee members. Read more. EU-US data sharing. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) adopted its first report on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework on Tuesday, which governs the sharing of personal data between the two jurisdictions. The EDPB welcomed progress made so far, but identified points of concern, and recommended another review in not more than three years. Supreme Court split. The US Supreme Court is split over how to handle a lawsuit filed in 2018 against Meta, alleging that the company misled investors about the risks associated with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, TheWashington Postreported on Wednesday. The Justices are divided over how much information a company has to disclose. |
| | | | Washington in Rome. The US has renewed a push for Italy to review its domestic web tax, Reutersreported on Wednesday. Russian interference. Bomb threats for polling stations in the US state of Georgia originated from Russia, the FBI said on Tuesday according to The Washington Poston Tuesday. Riyadh’s ambitions. Saudi Arabia is planning to invest $100 billion (€92.9 billion) in a state-backed entity that will in turn invest in data centres and startups for AI, Bloombergreported on Wednesday citing people familiar with the matter.
Tech courtship. Other than the outspoken Musk, tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai courted Trump ahead of the elections, The New York Timesreported on Thursday. Many tech billionaires, including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and even Harris-supporter Reid Hoffman, congratulated Trump on his win this week, Fortunereported on Thursday. |
| | | | Uncertain comeback. Qualcomm’s and Arm’s earnings, reported this week, showed the smartphone industry is making a comeback, with demand rebounding slightly for high-end devices, Bloombergreported on Thursday.
More US foundries. TSMC and GlobalFoundries have finished talks with the Biden administration to receive billions in funding and loans for US factories, Bloombergreported on Wednesday citing people familiar with the matter.
Pressing on. China’s top chip foundry, the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), reported record quarterly revenues, citing strong domestic demand for “legacy chips,” on Thursday, reported SCMP. Nuclear plans disrupted. The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected an amended deal for an Amazon data centre directly connected to a nuclear power plant, saying it could raise power bills and affect the power grid’s reliability, Reutersreported on Friday. Meta’s plan to build a nuclear powered data centre were spoiled by a rare species of bees, the FTreported. |
| | | | Musk’s victory lap. Elon Musk has been on a victory lap since Trump’s election win on Wednesday. The tech billionaire is particularly focused on a narrative that X’s user base grew amid the election because of people flocking to the platform to find out true news, vis-a-vis mainstream media.
Raids on Netflix. Investigators and judges raided the offices of Netflix in Paris and Amsterdam on Tuesday. Judges want to determine whether Netflix France voluntarily diminished its turnover in France and invoiced it in the Netherlands, which could constitute tax fraud. Netflix is cooperating with the authorities in both countries and complies with the tax laws in both countries, a Netflix spokesperson told Euractiv. Mistral AI to fight harmful content. Mistral AI announced on Thursday it launched a new content moderation API capable of detecting harmful content in multiple categories across 11 of the most spoken languages, including English, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian. TikTok, Spotify, Apple bury the hatchet. TikTok rolled out a new feature which will allow users to share songs from music streaming services, and vice versa. TikTok used to try to compete with music streaming services yet shut down its competing applications after failed tests, reportedTechCrunch on Thursday.
TikTok’s dissolution in Canada. Canada ordered TikTok’s business in the country to be dissolved on grounds of national security risks, Reutersreported on Wednesday. The app remains accessible, and TikTok said it would challenge the order in court. Australia to set 16 as an age limit for social media use. Australia’s ruling Labour party announced that it will back a legislation which would bar minors under 16 to use social media, according to ABCNews on Thursday. Brussels effect in Australia. The Australian government introduced DSA-alike modifications on its disinformation bill on Wednesday regarding access to information by researchers, a cornerstone of EU’s content moderation regulation. |
| | | | Cautious Kubilius. Andrius Kubilius, the commissioner for defence and space, struck a cautious tone at his confirmation hearing before the European Parliament, before being confirmed by a two-thirds majority of MEPs on Wednesday. Read more. |
| | | | | No telecom in Budapest Declaration. The Budapest Declaration, expected to be adopted by head of states and governments on Friday, does not mention the telecom market, although its first draft did. A step towards 4-to-3 merger in the UK. The UK’s CMA said on Tuesday that it “provisionally found” that commitments to protect competition under the proposed €18 billion merger between Vodafone and the company Three, could work. The merger would create the largest operator in the UK, followed by BT/EE and O2, and reduces the number of main network operators from four to three. ConnectEurope’s general assembly. The lobby of the largest telecom operators in Europe, ConnectEurope held its general assembly in Lisbon on Thursday. It adopted its 2025 strategy, welcomed three new members, bringing the total to 43, and formally approved Alessandro Gropelli as Director General on Thursday. Bouygues Telecom all set to acquire La Poste Mobile. French operator Bouygues Telecom announced on Tuesday it managed to reach a deal on Monday with Altice/SFR, -a competitor owning 49% of La Poste shares- closing negotiations which started in May. Bouygues is expected to invest €950 million and gain 2.3 million users. 100 Gb/s connectivity trial. On Tuesday, Finnish telecommunications company Elisa announced it will deploy a new trial solution on Nokia fibre solutions to demonstrate passive optical network speeds of up to 100 Gb/s. |
| | What else we’re reading this week: |
| What a Trump Victory Means for Tech (The New York Times) The Future of Political Influencers (Wired) Make new friends and boost hiring: How China's chip industry plans to deal with Trump (Reuters)
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| | | | | | | Today’s brief was brought to you by Euractiv’s Tech team |
| | | | Today’s briefing was prepared by the Tech team: Eliza Gkritsi, Théophane Hartmann, and Jacob Wulff Wold. Share your feedback or information with us at digital@euractiv.com. |
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