China and the US are the global leaders in artificial intelligence. Europe is lagging far behind – but can it make up ground in this vital technology of the future?
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00A whole new world of art, created almost entirely by computer.
00:06We can use generative AI to create things like text, images or even music.
00:11Leading the way on the artificial intelligence front are the US and China,
00:16where even tea harvesting is becoming automated on a trial basis.
00:20As for Europe, it has some serious catching up to do
00:23with what is probably the most important technology of the future.
00:28French startup Nuke AI develops new solutions for improving efficiency at logistics companies.
00:36The difference between our AI and other providers is that we involve people.
00:42We don't need huge amounts of data to be fed into machines.
00:46Our focus is on human beings working together with machines.
00:51We use machines to work better.
00:57France wants to become a leader in AI and has been actively attracting investors.
01:02The head of Microsoft wants to invest 4 billion euros in a new data center in France,
01:07which will also provide a boost for a number of new smaller firms.
01:13Startups in France will benefit from the financial support and advice on offer.
01:21France is still some way off the industry's leaders
01:24when it comes to patent applications and investments in AI data centers.
01:30The French government should focus on what we're good at,
01:33instead of trying to compete in areas where the US and China have a head start.
01:40It should support AI technologies that take a different approach to those that are currently on vogue.
01:48Berlin, Germany's political and AI capital.
01:53A range of cutting-edge companies have set up operations in the city.
01:57Among the complex tasks being worked on here at JetBrains, for example,
02:01instead of reading a 50-page document, you can ask questions and get answers about specific points.
02:07Part of the problem is we approach these models like we're speaking to another person that can understand us.
02:12But really they're just sophisticated algorithms that need specific instructions.
02:16So changes in, say, the wording or the tone can give us drastically different outputs.
02:22For good results, the AI might need a prompt comprising several pages of text.
02:27Prompt engineering is a fairly new business with high demand and relatively few machine learning experts.
02:34And when it comes to salaries, too, Europe is struggling to compete with the US.
02:41In the United States, salary sites indicate that this job is on average earning about $130,000 a year.
02:47But many people work with prompting, most notably ML engineers.
02:51And this job requires a deep knowledge of ML models beyond just prompting.
02:55So ML engineers are earning on average about $175,000.
03:00But competition for the best human minds is not everything.
03:04The focus has really been different.
03:06So in the United States, the top companies that are producing the top models are there.
03:10But they're really releasing these models in a proprietary fashion, so you have to pay to use them.
03:14In China and in Europe, by contrast, a lot of the focus has been on open-source models.
03:19So releasing models that are free and anyone can use them.
03:22So interestingly, some of these open-source models are also becoming competitive with those released by the top US AI companies.
03:31The US is still clearly ahead in AI.
03:34But some of the multi-billion dollar investments there have failed to pay off.
03:42After a sluggish start, European companies are now starting to make up ground.
03:48Meanwhile, China is itself hoping to surpass the US.
03:53The race to outperform the competition for AI supremacy is not over.