Europe's AI firms, playing catch-up, challenge US calls for slowdown

European AI firms, including Mistral, have criticized US companies for leveraging safety concerns to solidify their market dominance. They argue that these calls for slowing down AI development are self-serving attempts to maintain a dependency on US tech. Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, urged firms to slow down AI improvements and suggested an antitrust waiver for joint safety measures development.

While some US tech leaders, such as Sam Altman and Elon Musk, also warned about AI risks, European companies and officials have been more skeptical. Mistral stated that incumbent companies are using safety concerns to consolidate market positions. Mistral also noted that the risks of AI have been clear for months. European AI developers, such as Mistral, are seen as the region's best hope for developing its own frontier AI model, given the limited number of frontier AI developers in Europe.

However, many European firms emphasize the need to catch up technologically and focus on closing the technological gap, rather than slowing down AI development.