Is European AI a Lost Cause? Not Necessarily (www.noemamag.com)

Benjamin Bratton argues that European AI is not a lost cause, but it is stuck in a self-inflicted paralysis of precaution, critique and consensus-politics. For years Europe’s “regulate first, build later (maybe)” posture, heavy-handed ethical gatekeeping and endless stakeholder debates have throttled engineering pipelines, sent talent abroad, and left gaps filled by U.S. and Chinese platforms. Recent political wake-up calls — from leaders as disparate as Emmanuel Macron to cultural actors — are shifting sentiment, but Bratton warns momentum will vanish unless Europe commits to concrete engineering choices and accepts the costs of building compute, chips, networks, data centers, cloud and model infrastructures rather than treating AI as only an ethical or regulatory problem. Technically, Bratton stresses that an AI-era “Eurostack” must be reconceived: neural-network‑centred, hemispheric infrastructure rather than a tacked-on “data/AI” layer atop classical software stacks. He critiques conservative visions (e.g., Francesca Bria’s) as backward-looking, and notes the intellectual resistance from critics like Evgeny Morozov and Kate Crawford, who often favor refusal or narrowly utopian alternatives. The takeaway for the AI/ML community: Europe can still be a major player if it pivots from performative critique to practical diffusion—investing in chips, datasets, compute, open models and deployment pathways—while retaining distinctive regulatory and social values.