The next chapter for AI in the EU

Key takeaways:

• New program to train 20,000 SME across Europe with AI skills

• €500,000 NGO grant to support research into youth safety and wellbeing

• More ways to partner with governments through OpenAI for Europe

OpenAI is today launching its EU Economic Blueprint 2.0—with new EU AI usage data and a set of initiatives designed to accelerate adoption of AI across Europe to ensure people, businesses and countries seize the full opportunity of this transformative technology. 

That includes a new program to train 20,000 SMEs across Europe with AI skills, supported by Booking.com; a €500,000 NGO grant to support EU research into youth safety and wellbeing; and more ways for governments to partner with OpenAI on national AI priorities through the OpenAI for Europe initiative.

Ending Europe’s AI capability overhang

The Blueprint shares new data from OpenAI on Europe’s growing AI capability overhang—the gap between what frontier AI systems can do and how people, businesses and countries are using the technology. This capability overhang, ultimately, is about the opportunity for individuals, companies, and countries to participate in the Intelligence Age. Left unaddressed, it risks concentrating productivity gains in a small number of countries, sectors, and firms, while others fall behind.

Worldwide, the typical power user uses 7x more thinking capabilities—a measure of the amount of effort the model uses to respond to user queries, reflecting usage depth—than the typical user. And across more than 70 countries with the highest ChatGPT users, leading countries use 3x more thinking capabilities per person than users in lagging countries. 

OpenAI’s new data reveals the EU uses 17% more thinking capabilities on average than the rest of the world. However, there are big differences between Member States, with the most intensive country using approximately 40% more thinking capabilities than the least, and nine EU countries still fall below the global average.