Europe must build own AI or risk getting cut off by US or China, says ECB’s Lagarde

Europe must develop its own AI technology and build more datacentres in order to nullify the threat of being cut off by the US or China, according to the president of the European Central Bank. Christine Lagarde said the continent needed AI models – the technology that powers AI tools such as chatbots – that were “good enough” to carry out most tasks and run from domestic datacentres. If Europe invests in its own AI tech, said Lagarde, “the threat of being cut off loses its force”. AI is being…

Fragile Global Economy Faces New Crisis in Israel-Gaza War

The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that the pace of the global economic recovery is slowing, a warning that came as a new war in the Middle East threatened to upend a world economy already reeling from several years of overlapping crises. The eruption of fighting between Israel and Hamas over the weekend, which could sow disruption across the region, reflects how challenging it has become to shield economies from increasingly frequent and unpredictable global shocks. The conflict has cast a cloud over a gathering of top economic policymakers…

The pendulum swung against globalisation in 2022 – and that’s no bad thing | Larry Elliott

This was supposed to be the year when things returned to normal. After the collapse of activity during the months of lockdown in 2020 and the supply bottlenecks of 2021, the hope was that 2022 would call time on an era of seemingly permanent crisis. It hasn’t quite turned out like that. Indeed, 2022 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for the global economy, taking its place alongside the end of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system in 1971, the reunification of Germany in 1990 and the…