Roberto VIOLA

Policy topics Roberto VIOLA is active on

What Roberto VIOLA has said (11)

• “First of all, our companies, our financial institutions. But the world believes Europe is a good place to invest in technology. And I think we should be all happy about this and seize this opportunity a little bit to be pressing on with our strategy. So to make sure, first of all, that this now world class infrastructure is realized, that we can come quickly to the realization these gigafactories. By the way, in all the cases, we talk about the green power, we talk about a very advanced solution in terms of energy consumption. So in terms also of what we can deliver, we can also deliver a very, very power efficient solutions. Um, we have presented today an amendment to the our HPC regulation. We hope that this committee can give favorable opinion and we can actually close, uh, the, the, the regulation that will allow to tender the engine energy, uh, very soon. So this is very concrete. This is very Material and will happen very soon. Now, this is not enough, because when we look at the capacity that Europe has in terms of data and cloud system, we are roughly one third compared to the United States. That's why we also proposed a cloud and AI and Cloud Development Act, which has three pillars that resonate well with the questions I received. The first pillar is to make sure that European companies can offer the best solution in terms of efficiency of using energy.”
  EU digital & tech sovereignty · Energy efficiency
• “And normally speaking. I mean, the regulation should be. I mean enabling this competition to, to to to make its, its, its market shaping. So clearly there's no intention from, from the commission side to reduce competition because this would not be in the interest of the citizens. Clearly a spectrum needs to be. Assigned in an orderly way. That's inevitable. And indeed the regulatory bodies should be streamlined. Should be I mean, make sure that we cooperate in an effective way. This is all what we want to do with the Digital Network Act. There was a question about when it will be, what are the steps. So we just conclude the public consultation. We will go now into the impact assessment phase. So we will need to face our independent scrutiny board with an impact assessment. And we are We hope to be on time. We are on time to present it to the European Parliament and Council by mid-December, as it was announced. Um, so uh, the there was, uh, reference. There were many references to digital public infrastructures. Uh, yesterday we presented one example, for instance, which was mentioned about how you can create anonymous and privacy preserving credentials to protect our miners. This is an example of a digital public infrastructure. It was commented that why don't we, uh, do more to protect our senior citizens, for instance, vis a vis financial scams, which are more and more coming through AI, as it was said.”
  Electronic identity · EU rules on digital competition
• “And now we have a new challenge, which is the supercomputers are becoming very large data centers with the chips dedicated to AI, which we call factories. We announced the factories one year ago. Now we are already at 14 factories around Europe with co-investment with the member states, which will allow our startups and researchers to have the best of AI. But this is not enough because the complexity of our AI system is growing by the day. That's why we announced the Gigafactory initiative. And what is striking? Because the commission announced the Gigafactory, I mean, to have at least 4 or 5 of these very large compute facility. We got an impressive response from the market because we said from the outset, we are not going to pay 100% of this Gigafactory. We are going to pay 15% and 50% from the member state, 1.5. We got 74 answers. Proposals for 60 Gigafactories. If we sum all the commitments to €140 billion from the largest companies of Europe, from the largest banks, from the largest equity funds of the world. So I take this as a signal the world.”
  Artificial Intelligence
• “Now, if this is another lock in, in even more, more complex lock in because, I mean, there's a there's a kind of potential public control. It is not good. Now, the European law that the parliament voted is very clear. I mean, something that you described is illegal. I mean, it's simply illegal. So the first and immediate answer that I can give you are I'm not aware of those cases, but if there were a case like this with the new law and the wall that the member states have to produce by the end of next year. A behavior like this will be totally, totally illegal. Now, clearly you can be enforcing things by law, but people might still I mean say, but does it really work? I mean, so I'm personally very much of a believer, something that also very much the Parliament vote for it on the fact that, I mean, the civil society should be I mean, the ultimate controller of what's going on. That's why the law and what we are doing, I mean, mandates that the wallet is open source, full open source. There cannot be a single line of code which is obscure, so everyone can look into it. Everyone can make sure that questions are answered about how it functions, and only when. I mean, everyone will be comfortable with this when there will be, I mean, certification procedure for all of this, then we can say green light for the development of the world.”
  Promotion of open-source softwares · Digital euro · Electronic identity
• “This is the AI and Cloud Development Act that we hope to present by by the end of the year. And there's a there's a bit of a continuum with the connectivity discussion, because you rightly said at times it seems things are disconnected. But then when you look at how things are shaping and developing in the AI sector, you understand that there's a kind of connection that keeps everything together in the Gigafactory. Uh, offers you have many companies, European companies, which are telco companies, which are cloud companies, which are data companies. So this idea that we have floated about the computing continuum, uh, which is in our white book about the reform of the telecom market. So the fact that there should be and it was one of the questions. Level playing field between a cloud actors telecom actors is there is materially there. We are seeing it happening. That's why when looking at the Digital Network Act, we would like to make sure that we have a level playing field. We have, uh, the best connectivity possible for our citizens and our companies, clearly. I mean, copper technology is a technology of the past. I think our companies, our citizens, deserve to have, uh, fiber connectivity, uh, deserve to have when fiber is not available. Any of the best connectivity competition clearly should be the fuel of diversity, of good price competition.”
  EU digital & tech sovereignty · 5G
• “Uh, we saw it already when it was for the cheap act. Where, I mean, investors outside Europe found stability in the energy generation found, I mean, reliability in the network, things which are very precious for companies investing in energy intensive industries. And same applies here. I mean by clever, uh, usage of, uh, renewable energies, by clever optimization, by clever use of alternative sources. We have seen that there are many proposals which offer an interesting energy capacity. Clearly there are many, many things to do that we will do together with DG energy in terms of having a structural policy about energy generation and use in data centers. Clearly, I mean, we need to be mindful that data centres are not the only uses of energy, but what what we see around in terms of ingenuity, in terms of clever use of renewables, clever use of new technical solutions allows us to be optimistic. You understood by now that I am an optimist, but I think really we have reasons to be optimistic in Europe. We can, I mean, allow our scientists, our companies to develop AI, to train in Europe, and we can do it in the respect of the environment and also in a cost efficient way. The issue the second issue was was touched. Is of utmost importance. We are trying to say that digital public infrastructure liberate citizens from being locked in one or the other private platforms.”
  Energy efficiency
• “Thank you. Um, so first question posed in the second round is about the link between the ambition to develop our, let's call it our own AI and the limitations that might be, I mean, in developing AI in Europe. I, uh, again, uh, I hope that in the future, because these are all proposals that we are bound to business confidentiality. But it would be interesting and hopefully I mean, we are working that the companies disclose a little bit of what they offered. Reading the proposal we received on Gigafactories, I start to understand a number of things which are interesting. I mean, where we should debate more. First of all, when you start to couple renewables with and Europe is in a strong in renewables with data scientists, especially if there's closeness between the generation and the data centre, they can there are many things can be done because the data centers can absorb the peak of energy that sometimes the network cannot absorb. And if you then have a storage in the data center, then you use efficiently the actually the generation of renewables to fuel the AI data centers. And we have interesting solutions that are developing. And that's why I said this will be I mean, on a case by case basis in the various AI Gigafactory projects. But we want to generalize this point through the AI and Cloud Development Act. The point that we are sometimes outside Europe. Europe doesn't have the power, frankly, on the light of what is arrived to us, it is not correct.”
  Artificial Intelligence
• “Thank you very much, chair. Uh, honourable member, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I really thank the honourable members for the questions. They are very important questions. I will try to reply within the time that I'm given as well as I can. Um, let me start with the, uh, a team that is a bit horizontal in all these questions, which is, uh, what is a bit the European model? We want to see, uh, clearly the world doesn't wait for us. I mean, artificial intelligence is the new industrial revolution, whether we like it or not. I think I can take that from all the questions I received. We want to shape it the European way. So one one important element in shaping this is to make sure that we are effective in the three dimensions. First of all, that our researches, our start up, our industries have the best infrastructure that they can use and autonomously from any other company, hyperscalers or large company in the world. Secondly, that AI is used in in the direction of public interest, which means is used in public services, in healthcare, in manufacturing, in new materials and in robotics and many other examples. Third, that the regulatory system we have Guarantees certainty, and at the same time, it's not a burden for our companies. Now, if I start with the first one. We have been investing consistently in computing capacity for the last few years, and we brought collectively because this has been something which the the European Parliament, the European Council allowed us to do Europe to have the largest supercomputing, public supercomputing grid of the world.”
  Artificial Intelligence · EU digital & tech sovereignty · EU research funding
• “Whatever is the stake about energy? We will need to save it. We need to save it for the environment, but also we will need to save it because otherwise AI becomes too expensive. So whether you have a commercial drive or a societal goal, energy efficiency is a must. Europe mastered this technology. We can be a world leaders in terms of cooling. In efficient way. We knew fluids which are not water. Uh, the chips or even inventing chips, which have a completely different architecture. And this will be the first and most important, one of the most important pillars of the AI and cloud act. The second one will be to make sure that we cut any red tape, any impediment for investments. When these investments are directed to new and power efficient realizations of cloud, and also to create, of course, our cloud ecosystem. And I come to the third point, which was echoed by many of the questions we would like to see. Are the public sector making its contribution to cloud system, which is interoperable, which comes from European solutions, which comes from start ups. So to have a good code, our innovation procurement coming from our startup and make sure also security of our data is uh, the first and foremost consideration when doing public procurement.”
  Artificial Intelligence · Energy efficiency
• “And indeed, again, uh, identity recognition, website recognition, uh, watermarking of images. These are all techniques that can be used in what we call the European digital wallet, which will allow citizens to interact seamlessly with the public administration, with private actors, and have the safety and security and privacy to exchange information. And also they will be at the centre of the stage. They will decide which data to release or not to release. It will not be like today that in vertical platforms, citizens are a little bit forced if they want to have all the services to release their personal data. So the European business wallet and in the personal wallet are twin projects that form, let's say the, the, the, the universe of the European digital public infrastructure that will see the light next year. So the legislation for the European citizens wallets already in place and will be an obligation for member states. I'm closing for the member states to release it at the end of this next year, and in October we will present the European Business Wallet, which is the possibility for for businesses to actually have a digital residency and do everything online on a digital public infrastructure. Thank you.”
  Electronic identity · Digitalization of public governance & administration
• “There's another thing that was less clear when the law was voted now is very clear. We have new encryption technologies which guarantee the observability of the wallet is a difficult word to say that you can prove things without handing over information. It's called zero knowledge proof technology. We have announced it this week when presenting I mean the age verification. And this will be the standard, I mean, encryption technology for the transactions. So this technique, there will be no possibility, I mean, for the issuer of an attestation to know what's going on. Neither it will be possible for the relying party, those that use this information, unless the user authorizes the information to be disclosed to receive a service. I mean, so this is what must happen. What is happening? And, uh, clearly, uh uh, otherwise, things will not work. One thing I should say, though, we should also be mindful of those that would attack this public solution just to destabilize it, uh, and start to instigate the doubt. I mean, that this doesn't work just to keep, I mean, uh, users locked in one system or the other. I think we need collectively to ensure that the wallet is privacy safe. Unobservable open source. But we need also to defend these public infrastructure solutions, because I frankly believe that these are an important asset for the European digital sovereignty.”
  Electronic identity · Privacy & law enforcement