00:01Luis Garricano, thank you so much for joining us on Euronews.
00:05You have made quite a splash in the media this week.
00:08You've launched a new think tank, The Ryan Group,
00:11and it's co-chaired by Patrick Collison and Mario Draghi,
00:14who needs no introduction.
00:16But my question to you is, beyond the names, what's the goal?
00:20Yeah, so it's not quite a think tank.
00:22It's a group where we will seek to put together entrepreneurs,
00:27business people, policy makers, and academics
00:33to think about what Europe needs to do next.
00:36So it's grown out of the joint concern about what is perceived by us
00:43as a stagnation.
00:44The technologies of the future, the notion of what our future depends,
00:48including most certainly artificial intelligence,
00:51are being developed outside of Europe entirely,
00:54in the US and in China.
00:57And we believe that we need, Europe needs to act.
01:01We believe that there was a moment of urgency about reforms.
01:05You know well, just after the Draghi report came out.
01:09But then the Draghi agenda has been kind of overcome
01:12by all the events, the Trump election,
01:14the Trump trade war,
01:17all the other things that happened in the world.
01:20And Europe is not doing what it needs to do
01:24to really move forward on the reforms that we need
01:28to become, again, the innovation superpower.
01:31There's this idea that perhaps this is also an attempt
01:33by Mario Draghi.
01:34There's a lot of people who talked about his report,
01:36but he authored it,
01:37and maybe he wants to reappropriate his work.
01:39How did this come about?
01:41How many months has it been in the megan?
01:42No, I don't think it's in any way an attempt
01:46to reappropriate it or anything like that.
01:50I mean, it's really an attempt
01:51to really kind of confront the situation
01:55we are facing now,
01:56which is a situation that I think is critical for Europe.
02:01We missed an entire technological revolution,
02:04which is the IT revolution.
02:05We depend basically on American companies for that.
02:08We risk missing the most important change,
02:11maybe in the history of humanity,
02:12which is AI.
02:13We risk having it outside.
02:15So the way this came through
02:17is conversations between Mario Draghi and myself.
02:22For many months, for many months.
02:23When did you get the idea?
02:25Just to be clear on this,
02:26is this group the result of a form of frustration
02:29that this report is not being implemented
02:32the way that it should or at the pace that it could?
02:35No, I think it's very much a result
02:38of the diagnosis of what's happening.
02:40I mean, you've heard many of Mario Draghi's speeches
02:44in 2025 and you've read what I have been writing
02:47and Patrick Colson feels likewise.
02:50So we have been setting this up over 2026
02:53and we have been talking to people
02:57who could be interested,
02:59people who had written things about this,
03:01people who knew that they had been saying.
03:03So these are people who are basically concerned
03:06about what Europe is and want to move Europe forward.
03:09You're trying to send a message.
03:11The timing is not a coincidence.
03:12I mean, the message is that we really are wasting a lot of time
03:18and things need to move forward.
03:20So I think September is the start of the year in many ways.
03:26For me as an academic, for sure.
03:28But I think for politicians and policymakers,
03:31it's also the start of the year.
03:33And it's the moment that we kind of set all of us the agenda
03:38for what needs to happen, for sure.
03:40Is this a message to European capitals?
03:43Is this a message to the European Commission?
03:45Ultimately, the job of the head of the commission
03:46is to implement this report.
03:48Is this also about connecting the dots
03:50between the public and the private?
03:51Who is your message ultimately addressed to?
03:54I think the message is going to be addressed to all Europeans.
03:59I mean, when we say the time to act is now,
04:02and we say, hey, Europeans, notice that the technological race
04:06is proceeding without us,
04:08and the big decisions that affect the future of Europe
04:10are being taken in San Francisco and in Shanghai and in Guangzhou.
04:14So that, in Beijing, that message is for all of Europe
04:19to realize, hey, this is an important challenge.
04:22And I want to ask you about AI in a minute,
04:25but you say the message is addressed to all of Europe.
04:27I do have to ask you about some of the criticism
04:29that we've seen this week that says,
04:30when you look at the names, the country distributions,
04:33it is still very much led by Western names,
04:36some of the European names that we've seen very much
04:38in the elite circles of Europe for 20 years.
04:40It's certainly not the same faces we have.
04:42You don't agree with that?
04:43No, no, no.
04:44We have many, many entrepreneurs below 30 years old.
04:49We have people who've set up amazing companies in Europe.
04:55We have the distribution geographic concern has come up,
04:59always comes up in Europe.
05:01There's always some areas who's going to feel underrepresented.
05:04We are in process.
05:06But you have one, but you only have one.
05:08It's a gentleman from the Baltics representing an entire blog.
05:10You're Spanish.
05:11If that had been done with Southern Europe,
05:13you would have said that's very, not nice to say the least,
05:17and it's not very balanced.
05:19So are you working actively?
05:20I would just tell people, this is work in progress.
05:22They will see updates.
05:23It's not a done list.
05:25There's more names.
05:26There were, I mean, the list is done,
05:28but the published list is not done.
05:30What I mean is, we were in, when we posted,
05:34we were in final discussions with some people,
05:37and that will be updated.
05:39You also have a book that came out of this,
05:40Messy Jobs, on the impact of AI.
05:43We've seen once again this head of the European Central Bank saying she is concerned
05:46that Europe is really falling behind the United States and China,
05:50which are throwing all of these resources and money into AI.
05:54Are we really behind?
05:55Have we lost this race entirely already?
05:57Yes, Messy Jobs, my book, is a hopeful book.
06:00It says that it's a book of the impact of the labor market,
06:04of AI on the labor market.
06:06I've been working on technology in the labor market my entire research career.
06:10And the book argues that jobs are not tasks,
06:13that the fact that the AI can do a particular task doesn't mean the job goes away.
06:17Jobs are much more messy.
06:18There is much more than we do.
06:20The book starts with a vignette from a family, you know,
06:24when you have all your kids ready to go,
06:26and in the morning one of them says,
06:27I don't want to go swimming.
06:29And, you know, AI is not going to change the fact that you need to manage the situation.
06:33So that's what the book is about.
06:35It's about the impact of technology on the labor market.
06:38Our sense is this is going to be,
06:40it's written with two Chinese Hong Kong scholars.
06:45This is, our view is this is going to be a gigantic change for humanity, AI.
06:51And we do think Europe is massively behind for sure.
06:55Some would say the jobs are not going to be messy in the way that they operate and integrate with
06:59the AI.
07:00But in some places in Europe, they could just disappear altogether.
07:03What is the big concern when you look at the AI models in Europe that at this point dominates your
07:10thoughts,
07:10but also those of the Rhine group?
07:12What is the concern around AI?
07:14We, I personally believe that Europe needs to win the implementation race.
07:19We probably have lost the first stage of the technology and the infrastructure race.
07:26Largely, we're not going to be the ones doing the last language models that are the foundation models.
07:31But this market is going to be very competitive and we need to be the champions on that.
07:36Europe needs to be the best and stop putting so much barriers and start embracing it more proactively.
07:42Well, Luis Garagano, thank you so much for joining us on Euronews.
07:44I'm sure you've had a lot of emails about participants who would like to join the Rhine group this week.
07:50You've certainly made a splash.
07:51But of course, now we look forward to seeing the work.
07:53Thank you so much, sir.
07:55Thank you very much.
07:56It's great to talk to you.
