Welcome to a new era of AI diplomacy

Though they weren’t in the room, you could almost hear the familiar riffs of Donald Trump and Elon Musk in the background as the EU took a gut-punch for its technology record. 

It was JD Vance, the author, turned investor, turned Vice President, who delivered the blow in Paris. 

With European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and a host other EU big-wigs watching on at the AI Action Summit, the libertarian-minded Republican tore into the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the GDPR regime. 

 “We need international regulatory regimes that foster the creation of AI technology rather than strangle it, and we need our European friends, in particular, to look to this new frontier with optimism rather than trepidation,” Vance declared.

The statements shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Musk, the billionaire TMT baron, has long publicly shared his disdain for the EU. 

For its part, European regulators launched an investigation into Musk’s X platform in December. The probe was later extended in January. 

The Tesla CEO has also drawn ire for boosting the hard-right Germany political party, the AfD, on his platform. The country’s federal elections are now just weeks away.

More interestingly the UK also joined the US in criticising the EU’s approach to AI regulation, but Britain’s protest was much quieter. The UK joined the US in failing to sign a 60-coutnry-strong declaration to support “inclusive and sustainable” AI rules. 

The development is a marked move away from the Bletchley Park Summit of 2023, when then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sought a global consensus on AI safety standards. 

There has been a lot of politics since then. not least Trump’s threats of increased trade tariffs on countries which don’t follow his lead. 

But the move also makes sense to Sir Keir Starmer on the domestic front, where he’s promised to drive economic growth and build AI datacentres across the UK. 

The Labour leader had flagged his Transatlantic approach in an FT op-ed at the start of the year.

“We don’t need to walk down a US or an EU path on AI regulation — we can go our own way, taking a distinctively British approach that will test AI long before we regulate, so that everything we do will be proportionate and grounded in the science,” he wrote. 

So expect some more red, white and blue AI going forward.

If you’d like to hear more on AI, Matt Redley from SEC Newgate’s dedicated AI team will be taking part in a webinar, hosted by the London Stock Exchange, on Thursday next week. 

The webinar will cover the transformative world of Generative AI, looking at the anticipated trends, strengths, uses, and risks in 2025. To attend, please sign up here.