Earlier this month, the EU Commission announced its long-awaited ‘tech sovereignty package‘. Nominally this is intended to reduce the EU’s dependence on Big Tech. Hidden within was news of the appointment of Jim Hagemann Snabe as a special advisor on industrial AI.
It is hard to imagine a more glaring conflict of interest.
Snabe will continue as chair of Siemens which not only has a significant presence in the AI market, but is actively lobbying EU institutions on the topic.
Furthermore, Snabe only very recently suspended his role on the advisory boards of Google Cloud and the US-based company C3.ai, still holds stocks in the latter with a current value of over $4m [€3.48m], and has extensive holdings in other digital-related industries too.
All this makes his appointment deeply problematic.
