The EU Commission wants to advance the development of artificial intelligence (AI). The European Court of Auditors thinks so too. He is now examining whether the EU Commission’s strategy is any good and whether the use of communications based on it is effective. The Court of Auditors announced this on Wednesday.
“Artificial intelligence is of crucial importance for the EU’s digital transformation, its industrial policy and its strategic autonomy. The revolution in this field is in full swing, but Europe is still lagging behind on key aspects such as financing,” criticizes the Court of Auditors. Contains specific allegations against specific funding programs or funded projects Monday’s message though not.
Court of Auditors: Time is pressing
The impression remains that the audit authority is going too slowly: “According to estimates, the amount invested in AI in the EU is only half as high as in the USA.” At the time of the 2021 survey, the use of AI in European companies was widespread, from almost every fourth company in Denmark to one in every hundred in Romania. On average, eight percent of EU companies used AI in some way at the time. At the same time, the Court of Auditors insists on not losing sight of safety concerns and ethics when it comes to AI.
“The stakes are too high for the EU’s competitiveness to afford to fail in this area. The aim of the test is to determine whether sufficient efforts are being made to prevent Europe from falling short in this technological revolution falls behind,” said Latvian Mihails Kozlovs, who is responsible for this test.
Subsidies approved so far
So far, the EU Commission has decided to invest 9.5 billion euros in AI initiatives between 2014 and 2027. Of this, 2.5 billion comes from the Horizon 2020 program and seven billion from Digital Europe and Horizon Europe. In addition, there are funds in an amount that has not yet been specified from the development and resilience facility, which is endowed with a total of 724 billion euros, as well as further AI investments from similar project funds of the member states.
Finally, the InvestEU fund aims to stimulate AI investments from both public and private sources; The funds for this come from the budget of 6.6 billion euros (until 2027) for research, innovation and digitization. Overall, according to the EU’s goal, AI investments by private and public investors should increase to 20 billion euros annually by the end of the decade. The results of the audit should be available in about a year.
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