Thomas Plantinga, CEO of used fashion resale app Vinted, takes center stage during WebSummit 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Harry Murphy | Sports File for Web Summit Getty Images
LISBON, Portugal — Tech CEOs in Europe are urging countries in the region to take bold action to counter the dominance of Big Tech and the United States for key technologies like artificial intelligence following Donald Trump’s election victory. Fight addiction.
The Republican politician’s victory was a hot topic among prominent tech bosses at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Many attendees said they weren’t sure what to expect from the US president-elect, citing that unpredictability as a fundamental challenge right now.
Andy Yen, CEO of Swiss VPN developer Proton, says Europe should echo US protectionism and adopt a more “Europe-first” approach to technology – in part the past two decades. must reverse the trend, during which a handful of large American tech firms have dominated most of the Western world’s technologies, from web browsing to smartphones.
VPNs, or virtual private networks, are services that encrypt data and mask a user’s IP address to hide browsing activity and bypass censorship.
“It’s time for Europe to step up,” Yen told CNBC on the sidelines of the Web Summit. “It’s time to be bolder, it’s time to be more aggressive. And now is the time, because we now have a leader in America who is ‘America-first,’ so I think our European leaders Should be ‘Europe-first’.
A key move by the EU over the past decade has been to legislate and introduce tough new regulations to tackle the dominance of big tech players, such as Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta.
As Trump prepares to seek a second term in office, fears have grown that Europe may continue its tough stance on tech giants for fear of retaliation from the new administration.
US Big Tech Playing ‘Extremely Unfair’
Proton’s Yen, for one, urged the European Union not to thwart its efforts to rein in US tech giants.
“Europe is thinking with a very globalist mindset. They’re thinking we need to be fair to everybody, we need to open our markets to everybody, we need to be fair,” he told CNBC. Need to play, because we believe in justice.”
“Well, guess what? The Americans and the Chinese didn’t get the memo. They’ve been playing extremely unfair for the last 20 years. And now they have a president who is very ‘America First’.”
Mitchell Baker, former CEO of the US open internet nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, said the EU’s DMA has made meaningful changes to the Firefox browser since Google implemented a “choice screen” on Android phones. It has increased activities that enable users to choose their search. Engine
“The change in new Firefox users and market share on Android is significant,” Baker said. “That’s good for us — but it’s also an indication of how much strength and central distribution these companies have.”
He added, “This change in consumption due to a choice screen is not the full picture. But it is an indication of the kinds of things consumers cannot choose and that businesses cannot successfully build.” Because the technology industry is still being formed.”
Thomas Plantinga, CEO of used clothing resale app Vinted, headquartered in Lithuania, urged Europe to make the “right choices” to ensure the continent can “protect itself” and ” Don’t be left behind.”
“If you look very realistically at what countries do, they try to fend for themselves and they try to form alliances to strengthen themselves,” Plantinga told CNBC in an interview. are, and be stronger as a coalition,” Plantinga told CNBC in an interview. “We have very talented, well-educated people.”
“We need to. [to] Make sure that we can take care of our own security, that we can take care of our own energy, that we make sure that we continue to invest in our education and innovation so that we can sustain the rest. [of the world]”He stressed. “If we don’t, we will be left behind. In every collaboration, it’s always a trade-off. And if we don’t have much to trade, we become vulnerable.”
‘AI autonomy’ is now a key battleground.
Another theme that attracted a lot of chatter on the ground at WebSummit was “AI sovereignty” – which refers to countries and regions localizing the critical computing infrastructure behind AI services, so that the system is regional. Become more reflective of languages, cultures and values.
With Microsoft becoming a key player in AI, there have been concerns that the maker of the Windows operating system and Office productivity tools suite has taken a dominant position when it comes to basic AI tools.
The tech giant is a key backer behind OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, whose technology it also uses heavily in its products.
For some startups, Microsoft’s decision to embrace AI has resulted in detrimental, anti-competitive effects.
Last year, Microsoft increased the fees it charges search engines for using its Bing search APIs, which allow developers to access the tech giant’s back-end search infrastructure — part of which it owns. This is due to the high costs associated with AI-powered search features.
“They’re slowly reducing our income – we’re still dependent on them – and it reduces our ability to do things,” said Christian Kroll, CEO of sustainability-focused search engine Acocia. told CNBC. “Microsoft is a very tough competitor.”
CNBC has reached out to Microsoft for comment.
Ecosia recently partnered with fellow search provider Qwant to create a European search index and reduce reliance on US Big Tech to deliver web browsing results.
Meanwhile, the EU’s AI Act, a landmark artificial intelligence law with global implications, introduces new transparency requirements and restrictions on companies developing and using AI.
These laws are likely to have a major impact on US tech firms, as they are increasingly involved in AI development and investment.
With Trump in power, it’s unclear what this could mean for the global AI regulatory landscape.
Shelly McKinley, chief legal officer at code repository platform GitHub, said she can’t predict what Trump will do in his second term — but that businesses are planning for a range of different scenarios in the meantime. .
“We’ll learn in the next few months what President-elect Trump will say, and in January we’ll start to see what President Trump does in that area,” McKinley said during a CNBC moderated panel earlier this week. said
“I think it’s important that all of us, as a society, as businesses, as people, keep thinking about different scenarios,” he added. “I think, like any political change, like any world change, we’re all still thinking about what we can do in all these scenarios.”
