Remarks by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday – apparently announcing that she would sign “pilot projects” related to the EU’s planned AI Gigafactories – were subsequently edited out of the official transcript of her speech.
In January the Commission revealed plans to support several training hubs for very large AI models, so-called “AI Gigafactories”. The hubs are meant to be co-financed with countries and companies – to the tune of €20 billion overall.
Before the summer, Tech Commissioner Henna Virkkunen revealed that the Commission had received 76 expressions of interest – far more than the six or seven the EU executive said it had expected.
An official call for expressions of interest was expected to follow towards the end of the year, to define main requirements, selection criteria, and funding conditions for hosting one of the planned Gigafactories. But von der Leyen’s speech today appeared to upend the established procedure.
“Later today during this Conference, we will sign the first pilot projects,” she said on Tuesday morning, speaking at a conference marking the one-year anniversary of the Draghi report on European competitiveness.
It was not immediately clear what “pilots” the EU’s president was referring to, as the Commission had not mentioned any plan to establish test projects ahead of building the gigafactories themselves. But, at the Commission’s midday press briefing, a spokesperson said the pilot projects that will be signed today are in fact for the EU’s planned green transport corridors.
Mario Draghi also gave a speech at the conference where von der Leyen made the erroneous remarks – laying into the Commission for not moving quickly enough to grow the European AI ecosystem.
(nl)
