European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants to invite the main artificial intelligence companies to discuss industry efforts to impose a slowdown of AI development, she will say in her State of the European Union speech on Wednesday.
"I will invite the main frontier labs for a discussion on how we can support ongoing industry efforts to pace the frontier," she is set to say based on a draft of her State of the European Union seen by POLITICO.
Von der Leyen will acknowledge the warnings by several top tech bosses in the past week "to pace the frontier." Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Saturday called for a slowdown, quickly getting the backing of the CEO of xAI Elon Musk and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman.
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Von der Leyen is not expected to give her explicitly assessment on those calls, but said Europe was ready to "support ongoing industry efforts" on it.
The Commission president will also call for international collaboration on the testing and evaluating of frontier AI models. She is expected to extend that invitation to the U.K. and Canada, but refrained from mentioning the U.S. and China, the clear frontrunners in the AI race.
POLITICO reported earlier this week that the EU and Canada are already highly aligned on AI. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is attending von der Leyen's speech on Wednesday in Strasbourg.
Von der Leyen is also set to say Europe shouldn't worry too much about leading frontier AI development itself but rather "be the ones who draw the greatest value from it." She added the Commission will focus on five sectors that it sees as gaining the highest value from AI use: health, transport, agri-food, advanced manufacturing, and defence and space.