Leading European artificial intelligence companies, including the French startup Mistral, are pushing back against calls from US peers to slow down the development of advanced AI, accusing established American players of using safety concerns to cement their market dominance. This rebuttal comes in response to a proposal from Anthropic, which has urged the industry to adopt a more cautious pace.

Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, has called for AI companies to decelerate model development and proposed antitrust exemptions that would permit leading developers to jointly establish safety measures. Similarly, OpenAI's chief, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk of xAI have issued warnings about the potential dangers of increasingly powerful AI systems, agreeing on the need for some level of development control. However, this perspective is being met with significant skepticism from European companies and officials.

In an official statement, French startup Mistral argued that some incumbent players are using this moment to solidify their positions and advocate for regulations that favor themselves over competitors. The company contends that these risks have been evident for months. Ben Brooks, the head of public policy at German AI startup Black Forest Labs, expressed concern that setting arbitrary thresholds to separate large labs from newcomers would stifle open innovation at or near the cutting edge of the field.

Clement Delangue, CEO of the Franco-American software company Hugging Face, posted on X last week that this is a time for acceleration, not deceleration. Despite disagreeing with the slowdown call, he did endorse Amodei's suggestion for establishing independent evaluators within AI firms to ensure accountability.

European policymakers are also weighing in on the debate. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated on Wednesday that the EU's recently adopted landmark legislation regulating AI use positions Europe to take a leading role in global efforts to address these risks. Meanwhile, Germany's digital affairs ministry has declared that pausing AI development is not a viable option for Europe. Daniel Abbou, head of Germany's AI industry association, emphasized that Europe should focus on closing the technology gap, stating that for European companies, this debate is irrelevant, and the priority is to first make up for lost ground in technology.

This transatlantic rift highlights a growing divide over how to handle the rapid evolution of AI, with European players favoring a more open and competitive environment at a time when major US firms are advocating for more cautious progress.