Artificial intelligence and the importance of industrial policy

In the Ai-driven technology revolution, Europe is clearly lagging behind the US and China even though it has accelerated the pace of investment in the past two years. The gap cannot be closed but can be narrowed. One of the most interesting courses of action in terms of prospects is to increase productivity through Ai in key sectors of the European real economy. Large companies play a decisive role in the realisation of this strategy. However, while in the USA a very significant part of private investments in Ai comes from large companies (mainly from Big-Tech, but not only), in Europe companies invest much less in Ai than those overseas, both in absolute terms and in relation to their turnover. One of the reasons for this is the smaller operational size of European companies, which is also a consequence of the not fully integrated markets within the EU. For example, for Ai training and inference it would be important to have common databases for entire industrial sectors, but this can only be achieved through integration and cooperation between large companies.

If we turn our gaze to Italy, the gap with the leaders in Ai investment appears even more marked: among the European companies that have invested the most in Ai, belonging to various sectors (defence, health, telecommunications, Ai chips, language reading models) there are French, German, Dutch but no Italian ones.

This situation raises an industrial policy issue because it is necessary to create an ecosystem that fosters the development of Ai in our specialised sectors by supporting it with access to data and capital also through public initiatives and resources.

The epicentre of this ecosystem could be the state-owned enterprises because of the significant role they still play in our economy, not only in terms of size but also for the centrality of the industries in which they operate (defence, energy, telecommunications infrastructure, aerospace, transport, etc.).

The question of the importance, in this historical phase, of proposing and implementing a clear industrial policy seems to underlie the letter that the new director general of the Treasury, Francesco Soro, is said to have sent to the state-controlled investees, recalling the strategic guidance role of the Mef, a circumstance mentioned in the article published last Sunday in 'Il Tempo' by Bisignani, in which the author, in this vein, suggests the advisability of introducing a Department for Strategic Participations or a new Iri renamed Institute for Industrial Revival.