AI capabilities are advancing rapidly. Europe’s ability to understand, shape, and respond to that progress is not keeping pace. In the past few months we’ve seen increasing calls for ‘pacing the frontier’ of AI development from employees and then leaders of AI companies, unreleased systems collaborating to hack external infrastructure during internal testing, and researchers leaving developers due to concerns that they are ‘not acting responsibly’. Amongst all of this, Europe is largely absent. It is currently not in a position to shape AI’s development in a positive direction, nor withstand the potential risks. Without urgent and far-reaching action beginning this year, the prosperity, sovereignty, and security of all Europeans are at risk. The best time for Europe to start preparing for transformative AI is now. In my opinion the first step should be to drastically expand public institutions’ ability to act and react in a world with transformative AI. This includes both the European Commission and Member State governments, among others. It involves making sure that politicians and officials in leadership positions are well-informed and have access to top-tier advisors, and cultivating in-house centres of subject-matter expertise. Everything else in the strategy is downstream of this capacity. I’ve had the absolute pleasure of contributing to ‘A Transformative AI Strategy for Europe’ as a Research Lead over the summer, working under the excellent leadership of @privitera_ and @MonikaSchnitzer, and I'm super excited to see it published. I hope that those with the power to act heed the mounting calls to change Europe’s course. transformative-ai.eu/ It’s an absolute privilege to have worked alongside @anton_d_leicht, @philip_fox_, @milorignell, @FraukeStehr, @NoemiDreksler, and Conor McGlynn and have the support of @Ph_Aghion, @DAcemogluMIT, @LeoVaradkar, @ischinger, @FuestClemens, @bakkermichiel, @Yoshua_Bengio, @aleks_madry, Marta Kwiatkowska, @antonosika, @vestager, and @Christophkw, as well as the many, many others who supported us while working on this strategy.