The Trump administration’s order that Anthropic block non-Americans from accessing Fable 5 and Mythos 5 marks the first time a government has forced a publicly released frontier artificial-intelligence model to be withdrawn. Europe must read it as a warning shot, fired early in a period of great technological upheaval, geopolitical hardening and a transformation that will fundamentally change how people live.
The answer is neither resignation nor retreat into protectionism. Rather, Europe must embark on the most ambitious political agenda ever attempted in peacetime.
De redactie van NRC selecteert de beste artikelen uit The Economist voor een breder perspectief op internationale politiek en economie.
The continent should immediately create the market conditions for its own AI labs to start, scale and win, beginning with capital-market reforms that unlock massive funding, including by mobilising pension funds in large European economies.
However, building frontier models will take years and, no matter how ambitious the effort, may still not succeed. While supporting serious homegrown attempts to build frontier models, Europe must hedge against worlds where such attempts fail—by securing access to the frontier that already exists. That means treating access as something to be negotiated, and building the bargaining power to negotiate with. Three policy moves are urgent.
