The Need for Proactive Change

Welcome to the Times Tech podcast. I am Danny Force out here in Silicon Valley. And I'm Katie Prescott covering all things tech here in the city of London, the hot city of London. Danny, you're really lucky I'm here actually Everything Everything is being cancelled. London is in total lockdown because of the heat. You remember what it was like living here, don't you? I do It's absolutely horrible actually. It's almost thirty six degrees as we're recording this. Schools are shut. Hold on, hold on, we have American listeners. Sorry, okay, Americanize this. Which is probably your daily temperature. Exactly It's like, I think that's in the nineties, hold on. I'll check while you continue to. Okay, so well what it means is though over here Schools are shut because people are worried about the kids in classrooms with no air conditioning. People are being told not to travel except for essential purposes and and you're like this The LSE, the London School of Economics, has just cancellled an extreme heat conference 's too hot Ereme heat It's too hot for our extreme heat confereence. Scond, But it is amazing. It feels like the city's in lockdown. It's ninety seven degrees for our US listeners What does that mean for you? It's hot, It's a hot day But cancel everything. that feels a Aren't you guys like stiff upper lip? likeike come on. As I say you're lucky I'm here Wow, wow Thank you for soldiering on the listening public. Thanks you. The wine I think one stiff up a lip alone in South London. We should remind you you can now watch this podcast. Yes, as well as listen to it. Stop right now go to YouTube Cam. what is it The Times business Times business Yeah and our listeners can watch you suffer through this. It's just like this's like performance art a fan on very gently, which Hopefully no one will notice. Apart from the heat, we're also going to be talking about the huge debate that has blown up here about sovereignty and the ownership of AI. Not something that's new But something that is just hurtling up the agenda like Nothing else at the moment I can't wait to hear about this because you know, obviously for a long time people' been worried about America's AI dominance and we've spoken on the pod numerous times about what it would mean if if the White House had control like, you know, real control. of AI. Yeah. And what's happened is The White House blocking the use of two of Anthropics's models by foreign powers. which led to anthropic pulling them has just brought all of those fears that the White House has a kill switch on tech, on critical tech. into reality and shown really that when it wants to, it can And the latest news in this saga is a warning from Five Eyes, which is the Alliance of Western intelligence agencies, And they've said in what they describe as a call to action, AI is just months away. from potentially taking down governments. So we're going to get into that today Yeah, small things, small things. Yeah, and it's obviously it's a very powerful technology. And what is also kind of come through This week is that just How few hands at the controls. and not just companies, but really people And it leads to the other story we're going to talk about at the top here, which is the talent Wars between the AI labs this week. A couple of leading researchers defected from Google, Deepmind to Open AI and Anthropic. And it wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars just two guys walking across the street led hundreds of billions of dollars off of alphabet's stock market capitalization And we're going to be talking about all of this, the question of sovereignty and AI ownership with our guest Judith Dada, who's an advisor to the German government on AI transformation and a senior partner at the VC Fund Visionaries. She has written this extraordinary report it's actually more of a story on what losing the AI race could mean for Europe. And she published it just a week before that anthropic news. So it's really been the talk of the time here.. Fantastic timing. It's an extraordinary piece of writing and we're going to be talking to her shortly. But first let's talk about this latest development in the saga between Anthropic and the White House. So just to go back, when the White House put this export ban on Anthropic's two leading models, Mythos and Fable, it was really saying, we think these are too powerful and we don't want them to fall into foreign hands. What Anthropic had been doing was rolling them out really slowly to a small group of people, a small group of organizations so that they could use them to look where their cyber threats were. These models were so powerful. they were finding holes in their systems and allowing companies to patch them. And as the White House had made this decision to put the block in place, which led to anthropic, withdrawing them because they said, actually, we can't block this. It doesn't work with national front is, so we have to pull the whole thing Companies such as BT here in the UK we're starting to get access and use them. So right. that move, as you can imagine in corporations here has caused a huge amount of concern. But then we've had this announcement from FIy' subsequently which is just talking about the acceleration of the AI threat You say that this whole idea of AI sovereignty has been like a massive issue out there here It's a very different picture because I will say it and I don't know if it's clear from over there, but like Anthropic was forced to cut access to their new model Fable to everyone, including in the U.S. Right. And so That's how we care about out here. You know, like this whole notion of AI sovereignty. It's not even a thing. Like, it's just You know, America is an insular place and Silicon Valley is an insular region inside a very insular country You know, no one is even thinking about it or talking about it. And it's so interesting to hear you be like over there, it's like, this is the thing that people are freaking out about But what is interesting is I had a drink with someone from one of the big US tech firms last week who was over in London, speaking to customers here? And they are certainly very, very conscious of it when they're trying to sell to Europe.. And trying to convince European governments, customers here that they're taking this seriously there isn't going to be some sort of kill switch on their technology. If people buy from them, they're going to partner with people here. They're talking about when it comes to data centers, a two key system, potentially. So One key is held by the company, one key is held by goodness knows who else? They don't really know how it's going to work But it's certainly something, I think that yeah American companies might not be a point of discussion with you, but it I feel like they are they're very cognizant of it reminds me of like those eighties movies when it was like all the Cold War movies where you had the nuclear switch and you had to have People had to put a key in at the same time and then turn it It's just really interesting because You have these companies that are rolling these things out and everybody's kind of having these like spasms, these freakouts And then everybody kind of relaxes. you know, it was like the same thing with when a few months ago when And so I it came out with myths and be like, this is like a cyber security super weapon. And they had this you know, this group of companies who could they would go out and test it and kind of use it before why to release. And then they just released it you know, a couple months later with guardrails. But it's really hard to understand how this is all going to shake out because you have basically Andthropic Open AI who are just in this like death match for dominance They both filed for to go public. So they have a huge profit motive And then you have all these governments like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa You're creating these things that are can be used as super weapons. We don't really know what to do here. So we're just asking you to slow down It's just a big It's a big mess. and then the third it is much cheaper, very increasingly capable Chinese open source models, which are free, of course until you have this like geopolitical competition as well. Every time you slow down the Western ones. It's it's more of an incentive for companies like BT or whomever to be like, Hmm, mayaybe we should download this Chinese model and kind of putut our own guardrails on it, use our own data and use that instead because that's basically free and we're not subject to the whims of, you know, Donald Trump waking up one day and being like,, I don't like this And that's exactly why you can see the collision of these two things, the restrictions around mythos plus the five eyes warning. which says, guys, you all need to take this really seriously. It says, this is not a future consideration. It's already here. It's not just something that tech people need to focus on. It is leaders, it is boards Act now, makeake sure you're familiar with the threats And companies are saying, well, how can we do that when we don't have access to the technology that was going to enable us to make sure our systems were safe. I should say it's interesting speaking to people in the US. and I'm sure you've heard the same thing. This wasn't necessarily a decision by the White House against Europe againgst other countries, it was the only lever they had to pull when it came to stopping these models. And theyed in America too And they pulled an America too. well anthropic pulled it for everyone because they said, we've got U you know, we've got Canadian citizens in who working for us, we've got all sorts of people from everywhere. We can't guarantee that this is just restricted, right? So it's really, really scary. And as you say What's happening in China as they rapidly keep up. means that sure BT's not going to turn to China, but you know, people people are kind of looking for for the tech wherever they can get it, which is interestingly actually what Judith writes about in her essay. I mean so much of what she wrote about it feels like it's coming to pass O it's got some weird crystal ball I'm really looking forward to speaking to her because it's also this collision of just Silicon Valley mindset and the rest of the world this move fast and break things just Run as fast as possible, Bild the thing as fast as possible and then worry about the consequences and then ask the hard questions after you've already built it. And I will say that you know, both Anthropic and open AI have have been making noises of like, hey, we're This is concerning. We should have regulation, et cetera. But no one has said We're going to slow down. We're going to stop. You've met Dario, Dario Allay, the boss of anthropic. There's been a certain amount of criticism of him over the past week or so. I saw Jan Lacon, for example, on LinkedIn, one of the people saying You got your comeuppments. You've been warning about the dangers of this technology. now it's been pulled whose fult is that I wonder what you think about that and whether you think Dario is a scaremonger for marketing purposes, which is almost what people are saying. and he's got Ka. that's come to him or he genuinely believes it. I guess the only thing I would say is like, you know That sounds potentially right until the thing until like the event happens, whatever that event is. until like some bad actor uses anthropic myths to or Claude Mthos to shut down the water supply or you know, crash the electrical grid or do something really crazy or build a bioeapon And so it's a really it's an interesting kind of strategy because it's like, let's tell you about all the horrific ways this thing can be used which all feel like almost science fictiony, like, you know, Bond villain style. But it's not happening yet. so you can't prove that it will happen, but it's like very this very effective way to kind of scare people into being like, oh my goodness, what's gonna to happen here? You know what I should do? I should actually buy anthropic stuff because I need the latest, the greatest and most powerful system. now they said they they have gone It was worth saying. effffectively zero dollars in sales three three and a half years ago to a forty seven billion dollar run rightate which is like unprecedented in the history of capitalism to invent something and go from zero to almost fifty billion dollars in sales. in less than four years That's crazy. Should we move on to our next story? Yes, yes. so this is all related, right? These kind of very big existential questions. and then it comes down to the people building this thing who are also all related, basically. I mean, not literally. Indeed. indeed The most incestuous industry I've ever covered Someone described it at founderswore as Shakespearean Because all these people have worked together in the past, they know each other Yeah, and they just hop from one lab to another. So yeah, so the story, the other story this week, two leading AI researchers Noam Shazer and John Jumper At Google Deepmind have announced that they are leaving the company to respectively join Open AI and Anthropic. And the news wiped out two hundred forty billion dollars, which I think is about two percent of Alphabc's stock market,, which was its worst day of trading since May of last year. So over a year. so bad day for alphabet And it leaves the question of like, okay, who are these guys? So John Jumper He's done okay won a Nobel prize for Alpha Fold. So Alpha Fold was their key prrotein folding program, which just unlocked a world of drug discovery and was one of their kind of deep minded key moments really Yeah, like a real kind of like signpost in the kind of progress of AI So he's a very big deal. He use that deep mind for best part of a decade and now he's left Nome Shazir, he was VP of engineering and coite of Gemini at Google He's gone to open AI. and he was one of the authors of the famous atttention paper which developed a transformer architecture underlying the entire kind of generateative AI boom. And he is also, I must say, probably most important on his resume Friend of the Pod. F of the pod. Yeahah. I'm sure that's right at the top. Yeah, I'm sure it is So he was at Google for many years. He leftaps. He was frustrated with the pace of change and the pace of innovation. So he left. He started his own company called character. AI which was this kind of early iteration of a chat bot kind of like humanized chat bot And It kind of had a moment It was growing fast. It raised a bunch of money And I had him on and it was really interesting. And I was like, what are you using this for? And he was kind of like, I don't know. We just built it and we put it out in the world and see what people started using it for. And it was like an early indication of where AI was going in certain ways because he's like a lot of people are using this thing and it was like a pretty Flugy, clunky interface. Even so he's like, peopleople are using it as like a therapist And as a friend Fast forward Very tragically, a teenager was on character AI and ended up taking their own life. And the company was sued by the child's parents being basically like saying this machine coached our child to suicide There was a lawsuit I should say that lawsuit byy that family, character AI and Google settled it with the family in January of this year. Google ended up bringing Noom Shazir back in house and so then he was back in house for the last couple years and now he's gone again. But it just shows you, you know, Jensen Wong, I think, said something last year along the lines of basically There are one hundred and fifty to two hundred people who really matter When you're building these systems And John Jumper and Noam Shuzer are two of them So that is why, you know, if you step back and look at Mark Zuckerber paying a billion dollars to hire one guy. That is what is happening here. You know, These are a couple of those core people and now they've switch teams. It's interesting, isn't it? Be because there is a lot of movement in the AI world and there's a huge amount of a war for talent going on How much can you say this is what's going on at Google and how much is it? Well actually these guys you know looking for there their next move for whatever reason. But because of their importance has an instant impact on the share price because people are looking for signs of, you know, well, actually if they'd rather be somewhere else, what does that say about where they are already It is funny though, it does make me think like Alphabet is like, you know, what, the third or fourth or fifth biggest company on the planet They have a whole data center arm, which is Binging in Hundreds, I think, or at least many tens of billions of dollars in in sales It's a big o old empire But we're treating these these one, fifty to two hundred people. It's almost like you know, the transfer window in football People get so attached because it's such an easy thing to understand of like, oh, you've lost that guy to your, you know, your Cross toown rival or whatever But there's obviously for alphab in particular They've got a lot more going on than just like losing two guys. Well, our guests today will be able to speak to all of this. After the break, we'll be speaking to Judith Dada. She recently co authored a report or a story about what the world will look like in five years if Europe doesn't start pulling up its socks when it comes to the AI race and it's pretty scary stuff That's in just a moment. Hello and welcome back to the Times Tech podcast. Our guest today is Judith Dadar, who's an advisor to the German Government on AI and a senior partner of VC Fund visionaries, but she has been making headline news across the tech world in the UK and Europe recently for a paper that she co authored or it's actually really more of a story called Europe twenty thirty one, What Getting AI Wong means for us tells the tale of what will happen to Europe if we don't start taking AI seriously through the eyes of a German AI founder who flees to Silicon Valley and his friend Caroline, who is a Brussels Aarachnik, for want of a better word, who is staying in Europe and the sort of conversations between the two of them. pretty scary stuff. So the picture she paints of the U. S. and China winning, leaving Europe behind is A lack of compute in Europe restrictions on the use US. AI models, sounding familiar? Dimation by cyber attacks, and then eventually a continent which just becomes totally trapped between China on one side and the US on the other is forced to pick and that leads to mass unemployment, economic collapse, riots and irrelevance. So a happy tale. an unusual tale. we don't see many AI reports like this and I guess you know, we see lots of AI reports. So it certainly grabbed attention. So it's a scenario which felt scarily true suddenly a few weeks ago when Trump blocked the rest of the world's access to anthropics two new models and it has served as a bit of a wake up call for European policymakers. And there's an audio version as well. so why don't we hear a clip January twenty twenty five Caroline Dubois's office is buzzing. twenty eight. She's been there for three years and feels she is earning the respect of her peers and superiors But she, unlike them, is seriously worried about Europe's future. the deep seek news has not reassured her She has recently visited Silicon Valley It is nine thousand kilometers from Brussels, but it feels further The idea that AI is sparking a new industrial revolution is a truism in California in the European Commission offices it is bordering on science fiction. Wow. Judith, Wlcome to the Times Tepe podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much. It's G great to be here. I mean, it gives listeners a flavour of this. Well, it's not really a report, is it? quite sure how you describe it. Why did you decide to write this. And why did why did you write it like that? like a story. So also group are connected by one feeling, which was that we've all read reports We've all seen statistics And we felt like nothing was changing, at least not enough was changing. And so we asked the question, well, What is it that is required for people to start forming an emotional connection with the future for people to start understanding in very concrete terms how the future of Europe and the future of Europe with the eye might play out. And we thought that, you know, let's write this like a Sci fly story, we call it a narrative scenario. Let's create these characters that to us feel very relatable because we've kind of either been them or have interacted with them in some way, shape, and form. and let's really make this as concrete as possible in order to really shift the cultural language of how people are discussing AI? I found it totally fascinating as Katy said, you know, every other day it feels like we get a report that's, you know trying to connect with people and it just kind of all is just bit of a mess, a bit of my myiasma, but When you look at what you guys wrote if you step back What you're calling for is, I think the way you guys put it is The most ambitious political agenda since the end of World War II. That is what we are faced with or you are faced with in Europe, why do you think that is the case? Bea that feels dramatic. So I'd love to just understand Why do you think those are the stakes It feels dramatic because we believe that it is dramatic. We believe that AI is the technology to supersede all other technologies and all other kind of events. At the end of the day, we don't think there is a way to defend the European people if you don't have a seat at the table when it comes to AI. we don't think there's a way of protecting our social welfare systems if you don't have a seat at the table when it comes to AI. And so everything at the end of the day leads back to AI. Europe is in a situation where over the last couple of years, we have massively underestimated the magnitude of this technology. We believe it's going to be very similar to the industrial revolution. It's going to be somewhat similar to electricity. It's going to be the infrastructure that our kind of social fabric, our lives, our economy is going to run on We've underestimated the speed at which this technology is unfolding, at which it's happening. It's very much exponential and we kind of thought we had decades when really we think we have years. And then you know the kinds of people who have been Speaking about this technology and shaping it very much are kind of centered in Silicon Valley and then also China. And Europe is deeply skeptical and in many ways for the right reasons of, Silicon Valley of MAGA and a lot of the trends there. Unfortunately, we have therefore, kind of dismissed a lot of the messengers that have actually been telling the truth about how this technology is unfolding. And because they kind of said know A, we figured that kind of the opposite of A must therefore be true. And so if you take those things together, we've just vastly underestimated kind of the transformation that is going to come our way But at the same time, we need to find a way to kind of step back from that and say if we don't get this right, it doesn't matter how much effort and work we put into all the other things, it is for technology to supersede everything else I saw you speaking at London Tech Wek The week that this report came out, I think you're on stage with George Osborne, now open AI and the AI minister as well When you released this, it just went off like a bomb across the industry and I guess, particularly because it dropped that week when everyone was together, you really felt the impact. It was what everyone was talking about But just a week later, it felt like everything you set out in the report, all the terrible scenarios, came true When that White House export ban was issued against Anthropics models Did that surprise you that event or was it as predicted in the story We wrote the story because we very much believe that the things that we talked about could very well become true. But we didn't plan for it to be like a predictive timeline. And then when that happened obviously, I still remember I was in bed, a young daughter, she was awake at four A in the morning and I' just take my ex you shouldn't be doing it four A in the morning. but here I was. And I saw this and I just my mouth fell open and I couldn't And I was texting the group of overicers and I was like, this is happening. what are we doing? This is crazy. So we were very much not expecting this. But I do actually think, you know and irrespective of how the situation gets resolved and I think it's still very much up in the air I want to say that in the Author Group, we take security and safety very seriously. So we do think there may be reasons in the future to restrict access to models to ensure that we kind of safely deploy them and so on and so forth. But what we are really afraid of is a world in which the technology that is going to be so powerful is going to be asymmetrically available to some countries, some nations and not to others. And I think that was because it was on the basis of the export ban that the White House then reacted and it was very much kind of based on foreign nationals vers versus US citizens, that was exactly what we had been fearing because a world you know I'm an investor, investing companies who use these models to be competitive, who build their products and so on and so forth. And just the idea that you're working kind of crazy hours and you're giving you all, but you might just be out computer because there's a different company that just has more powerful models that you can't get access to. It's kind of this idea, like if you think about AI as a digital workforce, there's just this other workforce that has all these superpowers. and know no matter what, they're kind of like the power rangers. and like here you are, you know fighting with your flip flops. just it's quite an uneven race You know it makes me laugh. and it's saying it it sounds funny, but it's actually like very, very serious. And so that's exactly what we what we kind of tried to predict in this scenario. and then we were all quite surprised. But in many ways, I think also grateful is not the right word, but I think it's an important wake upp come away with I think it's five recommendations and one of them is almost like a not quite like a marshall plan, but basically like a European kind of everybody come together like we need to invest on a level with what is happening in America where there's like best part of a trillion dollars going into the ground just this year for data centers, for infrastructure, all of that stuff. the overriding sense is that A least that you guys appear to have is that effectively Europe is luggage on this train that is being driven by America. And I have no sense of this because I'm over here. The people that matter haveave they reached out? likeike what has been the response of like Yes, this is a wake up call. Between this between the export ban, is it like Oh, okay, we need to kind of actually do something pretty dramatic here. It's not just the broader public that has read the scenario, shared the scenario you wide and large, but it's also a lot of the important decision makers. So we have had reachouts from state secretaries. It's gone up to kind of Chancellor, Prime Minister levels in various countries. Our countries in Europe are so mired in inner political instability, you know, hugely unpopular governments,, kind of a lot of economic stagnation And you know, kind of still a lot of kind of the populist forces that are tearing you know at the seams of not just the European Unity, but really also kind of the national unity. And so what I'm most worried about is that no matter, you know all these outreaches and all the interestic conversations and people saying, you know politicians saying, they've listened to it several times and they really worry that everything is going to come true kind of exactly as we wrote it, are we going to break through the Overton window enough? we going to kind of break out of this business as usual, politics as usual enough in light of the poly crisis that very much every single government is facing. That is my biggest concern. because I do think counterintuitively, a moment where you're so stretched and where in many ways, how much more can you lose because already everyone's like not really leading in the polls. I think that's the moment when you should be taking maximum risk. I think that's the moment when you really say, you, it's kind of now and never. but unfortunately, I'm almost seeing the opposite momentum where, you know, kind of people are so scared to now, you know take a step out of line that I worry that we won't see enough of a for momentum, and of a willingness to truly go to it hurts. A lot of the focus of Europe twenty thirty one is on trade offffs where we say you can't tell the public that this is all going to be you know roses and butterflies and like it's going to be easy peZ, you No, it won't be. And we need people who on the one hand Speak the truth, say that this is going to require everyone, It's going to require industry, It's going to require families, individuals schools everyveryone needs to kind of carry their fair share of this transformation. But at the same time that there is a massively better world and better story for all of us on the other end What O of the scenes that really stuck out for me was When you describe a model slicing through Europe's cyber defences toiss shoe paper And I was describing it to Danny earlier companies opening their systems and finding cyber wallets on them because they've been hit by a massive cyber attack. And the reason for that is because Europe told its businesses to use European companies. So you focus on this idea of procurement, which has come out from Europe in the last month or so, which is rather than using U. S tech, they need to focus on home grown tech. And it seems that what comes out from your story is actually that's not the way to go We don't believe in sovereignty as autoarchy, but sovereignty as the ability to ensure the continued thriving of your people or kind of sovereignty is independence, as we would call it. And I always want to differentiate because I think there's a couple of things that get mixed up in this conversation about kind of frontier and non frontier models. I think there's a very valid case for a lot of the business transformation that's going to happen, right? A lot of kind great AI use cases don't need the most powerful model. Not everyone needs access to fable to answer like a simple HR request. At the same time, there's certain, I call them like frontlines or very vulnerable systems, think defense, think infrastructure, think cybersecurity, where if there's a model that is a closed model, that a nation has access to it and kind of certain bad actors get access to it, and you don't have access to the same model for defense, then even a six month or three month kind of lead may lead to a very, very big attack surface that I quite personally don't feel comfortable with. you know We've got nuclear reactors to cool. We've got got a lot of critical infrastructure really is absolutely pivotal that we're able to protect these systems. And so I would think about and so people should use the best is what you're saying, the best tech rather than Europeanact You want to harness the entirety of models that exist, but you want to still make sure that you are in a position to negotiate access to the frontier to secure your most critical infrastructure. And so securing access to the frontier, I'd love for Europe to be able to build that frontier homegrown and we've got amazing companies that are trying, but we do think that any policy, any serious policy that has sovereignty and the kind of security of the European people at its heart and its' core needs to at least contend with a scenario in which no matter how much money we throw at the problem now in terms of catching up with the frontier labs, it may not And it's for that scenario where it may not succeed, what are we doing? What's our plan B? What's the leverage that we've built? What are kind of the little chips that we've built in our corner that we can start trading in to ensure that at least for these critical systems, we don't have this kind of asymmetric attack surface relative to you know other nations. And so I think a strategy where we say it's just sovereignty above all and let's just now all completely only procure sovereign technology. I think it's just I quite honestly I think's ridiculous. I think it's not going to lead us, you know, kind of to the kinds of results that are required are necessary to to truly have sovereignty in mind. Right makes me kind of because especially being out here on the west coast and you know, the train is going one hundred miles an hour here, but then you go out into the world and you look at what's happening in Europe and it feels like it feels like the kind of the powers that the institutions are kind of addicted to the status quo of just kind of like there's this sense of complacency and it's like we're just going to let this happened to us Be as a cynical journalist, I'm like, no one's going to proactively, as you say, go to where it hurts unless there is an event I always feel like people always like are very reactive. And we've had an event to be fair. Yeah mythos is another question is was it was it big enough? Yeah, I'm just wondering like again, because you've had these reach outs from all these people in the corridors of power. Is that what you think is going to have to happen? Like something Terrible and hopefully, I don't want that to happen. but you know, something or something really dramatic where everybody kind of sits up and was like, oh We have to change course here. I just had lunch with a big European industry CEO and he kind of made exactly that case. He said just the wagon needs to crash full on before we can kind of make the meaningful change. I mean, we built LND terminals out of thin air, but it took unfortunately for Russia to invade Ukraine for us to realize that, okay, this is probably a good idea. What I want to say is and this is very much what we were hoping with this scenario. I do think and we call this kind of becoming AI pilled. There is a group of people who, because they've seen a future that they can't unsee, do actually feel the urgency in every single fiber of their body and can kind of align their lives with that new reality, they kind of can't unsee it. I think everyone in the author group has had that moment. And we were hoping for the story, you through the story for more people to have that realization, I think very much when we call it the San Francisco consensus, like when you go to San Francisco, kind of people just feel it, know it, believe it, with everything they have there. They just know that this is what's going happen And I don't think enough people in Europe have had it. and even though the scenario was know like successful in terms of like reach, I don't think it's maybe you quite enough to get us there. I always woondnder like when did we get so unambitious about the future? You know kind of right now it's mostly about know averting this, averting that we should all be like looking forward to the future. We should be like, hey, lucky you, you to be alive at this very moment in time Anyway, so finding that ambition again and then having the consequentialness of actually aligning your life and then taking the action to make that go well, I don't think that's happening quite enough yet. And I would hope that there's more work other than like a big crisis that's gonna allow us to do that before stuff hits the fan So there you go. I've been talking a lot about the strength of feeling here, but hopefully that really came through. It really did yeah, it totally really came through. Yeah It is all anybody is talking about. The thing she said where that I think is the kind of It's such a good way to put it. and I think it's not only applicable to Europe but also here is like Go where it hurts And like we all have to go where it hurts unless you just want to just like let this thing wash over you or push you out of the way or whatever. But the idea of like, making some hard decisions before you feel like you have to make them. rather waiting for some kind of event or mass unemployment or whatever all these big fears are to try to put things in place and make policy decisions to set yourself up in a better position rather than just waiting for the thing. to happen. I thought was really an interesting point Well, the whole narrative scenario felt far fetched until it didn't. Yeah, it's like's all it's like like all good science fiction where you're like actually as a predictor of the future in a real way. We have hit the hottest chain day on record Wiggan Holt, West Sussex So far, thirty five point eight Wiggan holts. I love. Beating Charwood. I love names of British towns and villages Wigenholt. Hertfordshire W Park is closed to prevent visitors getting burnt on the slides Isn't there water on the slides Isn't that the whole point I feel like come on y'all. It's It's going together. My goodness. It's extremely hot. To Judith's point. come on, go to where it hurts You know, go to where it hurts. Go to go to that water park. Right. That is it For this week's episode of Time Seck podcast, if you're enjoying the show, drop us a line to let us know. And we'd love to know your thoughts on today's discussion as well, all those points about sovereignty, where Europe stands on AI and is it even a contender in the AI world? Yeah, So tell us by emailing us at tech pod at the timeime. co. Uk and we will see you back here next week. Hopefully it's a bit cooler there. You know, life has reopened because it's. Yeah exactly heat lockdown will have ended up fingers prossed Until next week, bye bye. Be bye