Von der Leyen will invite AI leaders to discuss how to ‘pace the frontier’

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to invite the main artificial intelligence companies to discuss industry efforts to impose a slowdown of AI development, she said 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 said.

Von der Leyen acknowledged the safety warnings by several top tech bosses in the past week, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for a slowdown that quickly got the backing of the CEO of xAI Elon Musk and OpenAI chief Sam Altman.

Von der Leyen did not offer an explicit assessment on those calls, but said Europe was ready to “support ongoing industry efforts” on it.

The Commission president also called 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 attended von der Leyen’s speech on Wednesday in Strasbourg.

Von der Leyen also said 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 that 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.

This article has been updated.