Europe's AI Sovereignty and Economic Risks

No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately though, the shop's been quiet. so Hank decides to bring back the one dollar slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs and help him see if he can afford it. Copopilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work Now Aanks has a line out the door. Tank makes the pizza, Copilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at M three sixty five coopilot dot com slash work. Welcome to the Tech We Rite homeome for Monday june twenty second, twenty twenty six. I'm Brian Mccullll. Today Meta poured nine hundred million dollars into an Indian startup to Aqua hire the founder to run WhatsApp. Google lost Nobel winner John Jumper to Anthropic. Geti sword on an open Ae deal, jd dot com warned robots would replace its couriers and the pivot from toilets to chips. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech I'm getting to the age where I might pull a muscle just by thinking about stretching That's why Blueprint's longevity mix has been such a game changer. Blueprint was started by Brian Johnson, more popularly known as the Don't Die guuy. His latest endeavor in living Longer and aging betteret led him to create Blueprint. With just one scoop, you'll get support for energy, cognitive performance, mood, focus, sleep, cellular resilience, and Healthy aging, science backed, precision dosed and no BS. For a limited time only. ourur listeners get twenty percent off plus free shipping at bllueprint. BrY a njohnson d. comot By using code TBRH at checkout. That's code TBrH at blueprint. brianjohnson. com for twenty percent off. After you purchaseed, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them. We sent you Some bold name musical chairs for you today. Meta is investing nine hundred million dollars into Indian Fintech startup cred for around a twenty percent stake and plans to appoint Cred founder Kunal Shah as the leader of WhatsApp, replacing Will Kathcart So this is basically an Aqua hire or I guess, an investor hire Poting Bloomberg Sha will replace the current head of WhatsApp, Will Kaf Kart, who has been running the popular messaging service for roughly seven years. Kaath Kart who saw WhatsApp's user base more than double in size during his tenure is staying at Meta, but will step into a new role using artificial intelligence tools to develop consumer apps and products. A meta spokesperson declined to share details about Cathcart's next project The investment represents a new chapter for WhatsApp, which is one of the world's largest messaging platforms. The app has grown considerably in recent years, surpassing three billion monthly users in twenty twenty five, though it's still early and developing several new business lines, including advertising and subscriptions Building out those revenue streams as well as integrating AI agents into WhatsApp will now fall too shy Creds, forty seven year old founder Sha was recruited by Meta's Chief productroduct Officer, Chris Cox, who was seeking an entrepreneur fromom a country where WhatsApp already has a strong foothold called Shah, one of India's most respected entrepreneurs, a serious thinker, and a deeply good person, according to a statement shared by a meta spokespon Shock currently lives in Bangalore, but will relocate to the Bay arerea to work out of Metes Melo Park, California headquarters. The spokesperson added Meta has employed this investment recruitment strategy before to fill out key leadership roles within the company. Last year, the company invested over fourteen billion dollars into the scale AI and recruited its founder, Alexander Wang to take over Meta's newly created AI lab. Founded in twenty eighteen, Cred offers consumers perks and rewards tied to their credit card repayments. Its app, which has seventeen million monthly users, can also analyze and track spending according to its website. The company raised seventy five million dollars last year in a series G funding round led by Singapore's Sovereign Wealth fund, GIC, according to IBS Intelligence As part of its investment, Meta will provide both primary and secondary capital according to the press release, meaning it will purchase shares from some of Cred's existing investors ot will join Meta full time, stepping away from Cred, though he will remain a shareholder Mitton Samat in executive leading company strategy will take over as interim CEO while the board reviews Cred's leadership structure with an eye toward an eventual IPO, The press release said, and quote quoting Gokul Rajaran on X quote, Meta's hiring of Kunal to run WhatsApp is almost unprecedented in there, bringing a leader from outside Silicon Valley to run a global product. And this wasn't a straightforward hire either. Meta is paying one billion dollars for the privilege of hiring him The only comparable I can think of among tech companies is Apple hiring Angela Erant, CEO of Burberry to run retail Other than that, higher, every product slash business leadership role at the best teech companies has been filled from people in the Valley, if not the US This is a great win for WhatsApp users who will benefit from a leader who has a native and deep understanding of and facility with the product, Meta, who gets one of the best global consumer product thinkers and builders for their crown jewel product Indian slash global product talent ecosystem, which will be inspired by seeing that you don't need to be in Silicon Valley to lead a global product. That forward thinking tech AI companies will stretch to get the best leaders from anywhere in the world end quote And Google has lost another one, John Jumper who won the Nobel Prize for protein structure prediction says he is leaving Google Deepmind after nearly nine years to join Anthropic Lots of people are saying that the recent departures of talent from Google might put strain on Gemini's efforts to compete with Chat GPT and Claude quoting Bloomberg Employees and executives at Deep Mind have also raised concerns in recent months that the company doesn't have a clear solution for businesses seeking AI coding tools, which have become a key focus of anthropic and open AI and has driven both companies momentum in recent months Jumper won the Chemistry Nobel alongside Depmind CEO Demis Hasabis for creating an AI model that can predict the structure of proteins called alpha foold Thanks, John for an extraordinary partnership and wonderful collaboration over the past nine years. Hassabas wrote on X. What we achieved with Alpha Fold changed the world and showed the field what was possible with AI for science and medicine lighting the way for how AI can benefit humanity. Jumper is leaving deeepmind after one of Google's most prominent researchers, Nom Shazir. Also left for open AI Shazer co authored a seminal paper that helped catalyze the AI boom. His departure from Google marked a big win for openpen AI as it competes with anthropic to develop ever more sophisticated models before their initial public offerings, end quote Geti, also known as Geti images has signed a licensing deal with OpAI letting its image library appear in Chat GPT's search and discovery features. Gettyys stock was up one hundred and fifteen percent at the time of this writing quoting Bloomberg On Sunday, Getty said in a statement that images from its library will appear in the search and discovery features of Chat GPT, making a key reversal for the firm The companies did not share financial terms or disclose any details over whether Getty's images would be used to train future open AI models The Geti stock had fallen about fifty five percent this year to close at sixty one cents on Friday The stock photo company's shares have plunged over fears that opening Eye and other artificial intelligence developers will poach its business AI can produce realistic images and the companies behind the tools have repeatedly clashed with photographers and creators whose work helped train their technology Initially, Geti resisted the technology. It tried developing its own AI image generator and had sued Stability AI a developer of another popular tool Opening Eye has cut a number of licensing deals with news publishers and media firms as the Chat GPT creator expands into areas like video creation and advertising In May, Getty reported first quarter sales that missed expectations. The company is still waiting for approval to buy rival shhutter stock in a three point seven billion dollars deal, end quote Jd. com founder Richard Lu says Rbots will replace the company's seven hundred thousand delivery workers, quote sooner or later. and that JD will help retrain them in robot maintenance ing the FT The head of one of China's biggest e commerce groups has warned that its seven hundred thousand delivery workers will be replaced by robots sooner or later underlining the threat from rapid automation to the country's already strained employment market. Richard Leu, founder and chair of jd. com said the company had signed contracts with about one hundred twenty schools to retrain its army of couriers for new work such as repairing and maintaining robots In the future, when robots are delivering parcels, sooner or later, there will be a day when couriers are basically no longer needed, Leo told the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Forum in Beijing on Sunday It will definitely be robots delivering parcels, but I really do not want over Our seven hundred thousand brothers to go without meals without jobs. Leu did not forecast when robot deliveries would become widespread in China. However, a number of pilot projects are underway, including airport food delivery robots that take meals to passengers at gates and others that can ride commuter trains to restock convenience stores, Chinese media have reported The comments tap into growing concern among policymakers that China's rapid adoption of robots is threatening the jobs of the economy's most vulnerable workers The number of gig workers in China, temporary employees doing mostly blue collar jobs such as factory work, ride hailing drivers or deliveries, will reach three hundred twenty millionars this year compared with two hundred million five years ago, according to the China New Employment Forms Research Center Gig workers make up about forty percent of all urban employment in China. The threat to blue collar jobs from robots and to white collar positions from AI comes as the government reported youth unemployment at sixteen point three percent in April. Lu said robot repair jobs would become common, quote, becausecause robots are machinery, they will always at some point have faults He said technology should, quote, make human life become better and work more interesting rather than take away human beings right to work. JD d. com is one of China's largest online retailers competing with Chinese groups, Alibaba and Maituan and operates the Joy By platform in the UK, France, Germany and other European countries. It listed on NSDAQ in twenty fourteen and has a secondary listing in Hong Kong, and quote When inspiration strikes, you're usually not sitting at your desk ready to take notes. and honestly, some ideas are easier to say out loud than to type into your phone. That's where Plaod NotePin S comes in. It's a small, wearable AI powered device about the size of a AA battery that lets you capture ideas and conversations completely hands free So in those in between moments, when pulling out your phone just feels like too much, you can just tap once and keep going Claud automatically turns what you record into searchable notes, summaries, and mind maps you can actually use later Plod's also designed with privacy in mind, with enterprise grade standards including SOC two, HIPA and GDPR compliance. Check it out at plod. Ai slash tBRh. That's PLaUD d. Ai slash TBRH and use code TBRH for ten percent off Customers don't think in channels and support teams shouldn't either. That's why Twilio helps businesses unify voice, messaging, chat, and other channels into one continuous conversation so customers can move from AI self service to a human agent without repeating themselves fifteen times. Tulio combines conversational AI, contextual customer data and omnichannel communications to help teams automate routine support, route complex issues to the right agent, and give every agent the context they need to resolve issues faster. Businesses can turn AI investments into real CX outcomes by connecting AI to customer conversations, memory, and action Julio's AI self serervice agents can handle common requests like order status, billing questions, account updates, and authentication, while seamlessly escalating more complex issues to human agents with full context intact Learn more at twwilio d. com slash TB two. That's twwilio dot com slash TB two Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney Plus. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet A true epic and completely jawdropping. This is the only pure thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney pllus. It will be an adventure for the whole family and watch the Oscar winning phenomenon at home. This is sick Fire and Ash, now stream run Disney pllus, rated PG thirteen. If you can pivot your shoe company to AI, I guess you can do the same with your toilet company Toto Japan's largest toilet manufacturer says it plans to invest four hundred ninety five million dollars by twenty thirty to expand its semiconductor materials unit targeting R and D for next genen one nanometer chip production teech in Asia The move expands a business Toto has been in since the nineteen eighties, making electrostatic chunks ceramic aerosol position films and other advanced ceramics for chip making equipment Electrostatic chunks hold silicon wafers in place with electrostatic force during chip making steps such as lithography and etching. Ceramic films are used in equipment that needs durability, heat resistance, and specific electrical properties The one nanometer target is a longer term goal rather than a current mass production milestone, the source said the most advanced mass produced process today is TSMC's two nanometer CTO Ryosuki Hayashi said semiconductor related capital expenditure is expected to account for more than half of Toto's total spending in the coming years. He also said profits from Toto's newer semiconductor division have surpassed those of its bathroom equipment business. Following the announcement, Toto shares rose more than ten percent on june twenty second, and quote Well, you knew someone would have to come out with these eventually, quoting the Times Humanizers are apps that rewrite AI produced text to make it sound less robotic, formulaic and trite. Autotoypers slowly drip words and sentences into documents, making it appear as if papers were typed at a human pace when in fact They were produced by AI They even fabricate typos, deletions, and revisions. tools can help students evade software designed to detect AI Colleges and K twelve schools are trying to keep up with AI detection becoming a significant expense. Educators attempting to restrict the technology worried about students failing to develop basic skills are often lagging in what tech industry leaders are calling a detection arms race. In some cases, the very same compananyies selling detection tools are also making apps that allow students to cheat, including by writing papers for them or rephrasing text written by others The apps promise to help them avoid accusations of misconduct by scanning their work before they submit it, allowing them to rewrite passages identified as AI Even honest students are often willing to fork over ten to twenty dollars per month for premium tools since AI detectors sometimes flag legitimate work In one TikTok video, Carter Smith, a young tech influencer known as Carter PCs, gleefully shows viewers how an autotyping and humanizing app called Grubby AI can make it seem like a person naturally wrote an essay that was, in fact, produced by Chat GPT mister Smith has an enormous fllowing of six point a half million TikTok users. The video is not labeled an ad, though, mister Smith had previously identified himself as a paid partner of Grubby AI The app Mr. Smith and the talent agency that represents him Kugo Media did not respond to interview requests Autoypers are a response to the fact that many teachers and professors now check a document's version history for signs of AI use. If a thousand words suddenly appeared in a word or Google document at eleven fifty nine PM, it could mean the student pasted in text produced by a chatbot Grubby AI and its many competitors are finding ways around those systems Writer's website says the app provides believable typos and fixes along with background autoyping so your essay keeps working when you step away Dewey AI, an app that describes itself as the number one autotyper for Google Docs tells customers that when they're too tired or busy to focus or out with friends, the document looks like you wrote it, end quote. And back to the geopolitical beat for all of this, a speculative scenario titled Europe twenty thirty one is projecting economic and political instability in the EU if the EU fails to keep pace with the US and China in the AI race. oting the Guardian. In the hey week of G seven talks that followed, this scenario has gone viral feeding a feverish discussion of the urgency for EU Tch sovereignty. It has been read by members of the European Parliament and say its authors was brought up in point five discussions between British and German officials earlier this week It lays out like this. The Americans spend huge sums on a massive AI building program. The scenario highlights a real life one hundred billion dollars deal between Open Eye and NvIia, the three hundred billion dollar agreement between Open Eye and Oracle Bulldozers breaking earth in Texas for an AI data center pans, meanwhile, in this scenario, Put forward a tepid investment package and ignore advisors' pleas for a full regulatory carte blanche for data center providers In a matter of years, America monopolizes seventy percent of the world's compute, the semiconductor chips that fill the data centers that power AI models. Europe's economy is meanwhile gasping for air mostly because its companies have not adopted AI As AI powered cyber attacks shred European firms and unemployment surges, EU officials scrambled to parlay their one last bargaining chip, the Dutch lithography firm, ASML, which is vital to the production of AI semiconductors into concessions from Beijing or Washington. But it's too late. The US deploys powerful frontier AI software and learns the deepest fears of AI officials, and also which of them are having affairs. Authors of Europe twenty thirty one think that the solution to all of this is data centers. Europe needs to build more, faster and ideally in AI zones where matters such as power and planning can be streamlined and deregulated Brussels politicians who read the piece may take away a simpler message. The scenario has crystallized a conversation about the need for Europe to have technological sovereignty. This scenario, Europe twenty thirty one, I believe that some of the parts they mention can happen, says Nicholas Cesareres, a member of the European Parliament from Spain, but I think they are increasing a bit the alarms in order to call our attention The US. cutting off Europe's access to fable, he says, means that the EU needs to ask itself harder questions about who is building its AI infrastructure and who will benefit from it is the added value of having open AI or anthropic data centers in Europe, he says. We are buying a narrative that we need a lot of dataenters not to lose the race for AI. But this is crazy. We are paving the way for infrastructure that they will use and sometimes not allow us the possibility of using it. E quote Nothing more for you today, talkal to you tomorrow This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a fifty page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online makes sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responssees set upp required compatibility and availability varies eighteen plus