Artificial intelligence is also a hot topic politically. The EU front is being torn apart by the Pax Silica initiative of the United States. The Commission tried to negotiate an agreement in which all EU countries would be involved, but no common line was found.
Finland and Sweden made a break and joined the initiative of the United States. Finland’s decision to bypass the EU in the matter has also aroused indignation.
“For some of the member countries, it was more urgent to be involved in this initiative right from the beginning,” commented the vice-president of the European Commission Henna Virkkunen Kauppalehti’s Talousaam.
According to Virkkunen, discussions between EU countries are still ongoing. He believes that it is also in the EU’s interest to ensure reliable supply chains for technologies and Europe’s access to critical raw materials.
According to Kauppalehti’s information Finland rejected the EU front Nokian because of. Is this true?
“Well, it is certainly the case that the different member countries have a slightly different industrial base. Finland is a very technology-based economy in itself, just like Sweden. Of course, it was certainly seen here that it is important to be involved, because we need access to precisely these safe, reliable microchips and, among other things, raw materials,” says Virkkunen.
“Three times more data centers are needed”
Nokia is also involved when artificial intelligence gigafactories are planned for Europe, i.e. large computing centers that would allow Europe’s own top-level artificial intelligence model to be developed.
“It is a really big part of this European technological self-sufficiency and above all in the development of artificial intelligence,” says Virkkunen.
He takes an example: there are about 8,000 startup companies in Europe that develop artificial intelligence, but the biggest bottleneck is access to computing capacity.
It has already been decided to build 19 artificial intelligence factories, but they are not yet enough to develop the models. In addition, 4-5 very efficient supercomputers are needed, which are four times more efficient than the current ones.
According to Virkkunen, Finnish parties have been very interested in the projects. Among others, a Nordic consortium including Nokia is involved.
Virkkunen does not want to comment on Finland’s possibilities at this stage.
“But it is clear that it is very important that there is such a larger coalition behind this. There are indeed companies that also have a use for this capacity.”
According to Virkkunen, one key thing in terms of running gigafactories is access to clean, affordable energy. In Finland too, there has been a heated debate about data centers and their need for electricity.
“According to estimates, we only need three times as many data centers in Europe in the next few years as we currently have. The availability of clean energy is currently one of the bottlenecks in the way of these infrastructure projects.”
On Friday, the financial morning also discussed the result of Mandatum and the fact that buildings are now being demolished at an accelerating pace in Finland. Watch the full broadcast below.