Fierce SF Debate Over EU’s AI Act
“To say Europe is like Liechtenstein when it comes to AI is complete bullshit.”
Europe is not lagging behind in the AI race—we only have a scaling problem. That was the view of the head of the EU office, Gerard de Graaf, despite sharp pushback at a panel debate about the EU AI Act, hosted by EuroCham in San Francisco.
The debate occurred Thursday evening at SAP’s office on Townsend Street. The topic was Navigating the Future of AI: The European AI Act. Panelists included Gerard de Graaf, Senior EU Envoy for Digital and Head of the EU Office in San Francisco.
“We are not overregulating—we are ensuring that the use of AI is safe and trusted. Without this trust, innovation cannot thrive,” de Graaf said, defending Europe’s regulatory-first approach.
Another panelist, Lutz Finger, founder of R2Decide and data scientist at Cornell, questioned the effectiveness of Europe’s regulatory-heavy approach to AI.
"At the moment, Europe is not really on the global AI impact map; it is more the size of Liechtenstein. We’re regulating AI because we say it’s dangerous, which I agree with, but the real question is how we allocate resources and strike the right balance, " he said.
Lutz Finger also emphasized the urgency of innovation.
“In tech, if you’re not first, you’re a loser. That creates huge incentives to roll out new technologies rapidly, often before full safety testing,” he said, suggesting that industry motivations don’t always align with public safety.
Gerard de Graaf pushed back strongly against Lutz Finger’s claims.
“Europe is a deep tech continent. This idea that somehow Europe is a desert where you can hardly find any technology is a complete fantasy,” he said
De Graaf also rejected the idea that Europe is irrelevant in AI.
“To say Europe is like Liechtenstein when it comes to AI is complete bullshit,” he said.
He highlighted Europe’s strengths in clean tech, healthcare, mobility, and food quality.
“If these companies were in the U.S., they’d call themselves AI companies, but in Europe, they’re categorized by their industries. Europe isn’t a backwater in AI—not at all,” de Graaf said.
De Graaf also seemed to address a recent comment by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, who during a visit to Copenhagen in October, argued that Europe lags in AI investments and has relatively few major companies. Huang emphasized the need for Europe to accelerate AI progress and highlighted data as a crucial resource.
“We have a scaling-up problem. That’s the problem we have,” de Graaf said and continued:
“NVIDIA works with 13,000 companies globally, 7,500 of them in Europe. NVIDIA wouldn’t be the company it is today without European companies' intellectual and research contributions.”
When asked by the moderator whether entrepreneurs should have a more significant role in shaping the AI Act, Gerard de Graaf responded sharply:
“Why? Because they’re the ones doing the technology. Yeah, but we talk with the entrepreneurs. We talk with the regulators. This is regulation. Regulation needs to be enforced.”
This week, the European Union released the first draft of its General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, a voluntary framework designed to complement the EU AI Act, which officially became law earlier this year. The draft outlines transparency, copyright, and systemic risk mitigation guidelines for advanced AI models. Public feedback on the Code is open until the end of November 2024, with the final version expected to be published by April 2025.
The AI Act has drawn both criticism and support.
Critics argue that overregulation risks stifling innovation, creating legal ambiguities, and discouraging collaboration on open-source projects. Some also warn that European companies may face a competitive disadvantage compared to their counterparts in less-regulated markets.
Supporters, however, see the Act as setting a global standard for ethical AI development. Its provisions aim to build public trust, ensure safety, and promote accountability, particularly for high-risk applications. Proponents argue that the Act paves the way for responsible innovation by emphasizing transparency and human oversight.
The European Union office in San Francisco, established in 2022, focuses on fostering cooperation between the EU and Silicon Valley in areas like technology, digital policy, and innovation, emphasizing ethical AI development and transatlantic partnerships.