Bigger And Faster Or Better And Greener? The EU Needs To Define Its Priorities For AI

The European Commission's AI Continent Action Plan (AI-CAP) articulates Europe’s ambition to take global leadership in the AI race. It wants to secure sustainable growth while pursuing better, democratic AI. The plan promises to offer a much-needed vision on the role of AI in Europe, but its ambitions leave too much space for ambiguity.

One tension arises between the EU’s competitive and democratic drives. While stressing the need for democratic safeguards in the development of AI, the plan states that the EU must act fast to harness the economic potential of AI to boost its competitiveness. Another tension relates to the EU’s environmental ambitions. The plan hints only briefly at the environmental costs of AI developments in terms of energy consumption — even though these could jeopardize the European Green Deal — while extensively emphasizing the potential of AI to harness sustainability goals.

Who sets the conditions?

Reading the AI-CAP raises the question: Does the EU want bigger AI as fast as possible, or does it want democratic AI as sustainable as possible? As it stands now, the ambiguity manifested in the plan creates unrealistic expectations of the future of AI in Europe. If the EU wants to create a sustainable and democratic AI infrastructure, it needs to address two crucial points: 1) What are the necessary guardrails for a fair and responsible use of AI, even if adherence to such values would hamper economic competitiveness? 2) What limits does the EU want to impose on the currently unbridled growth of AI, given its enormous environmental impact and resource demand in the face of climate change?

Since Europe is currently not clear on its priorities for AI development, US-based Big Tech companies can use their economic and discursive power to push their own ambitions onto Europe. Through publications directly aimed at EU policy-makers, companies promote their services as if they are perfectly aligned with European values. By promising the EU can have it all — bigger, faster, greener and better AI — tech companies exploit this flexible discursive space to spuriously position themselves as “supporters” of the EU’s AI narrative. Two examples may illustrate this: OpenAI and Google.

The discursive flexibility of OpenAI

On April 7, 2025, OpenAI shared a report titled “EU Economic Blueprint.” The website announcement explains how the company wants “to help Europe seize the promise of artificial intelligence to drive sustainable economic growth across the region and ensure that AI is developed and deployed by Europe, in Europe, for Europe.” The report details OpenAI’s purported intention to align its corporate activities with EU values. Describing how the EU can secure AI growth, streamline its rules, and maximize AI’s potential across sectors while operating in line with European values, OpenAI positions itself as a constructive partner towards EU policymakers.

The report underscores the EU’s ambition to strive for a democratic, sustainable AI ecosystem while simultaneously stressing the need to act fast and secure capital to build a thriving AI infrastructure. Rather than addressing inherent conflicts of interest in terms of environmental and democratic costs, a cautious narrative of economic failure pushes this line of argument: “If Europe doesn’t provide the attractive environment for this investment through clear policies and possibly public-private partnerships, the funds will flow to projects elsewhere, potentially backed by regimes that do not share Europe’s values.” The statement contains a clear message for Europe to take charge of its economic competitiveness while minding its political interests; it also frames OpenAI as a helpful steward to keep “other regimes” at bay — a clear hint at China — while embracing American companies’ stewardship.

Looking beyond the rhetorical flattery of this report, people should immediately notice how it contradicts statements OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, has made at other moments. In his testimony to the US Senate on May 8, Altmanshared his dream to get the whole world on a US stack. When addressing the US government, OpenAI openly pushed for unhampered AI growth to secure US hegemony. In this setting, sustainability was merely discussed as “energy security” while economic competitiveness was presented as a core public value. The hearing discloses a more honest version of OpenAI’s corporate agenda, completely devoid of its “by, in, and for Europe” narrative.

Google’s volatile climate vision

Google’s PR advances show a similar ambivalence. In the same week as OpenAI’s Europe report launch, Google launched a policy roadmap for the EU. The report titled “The AI Opportunity for Europe’s Climate Goals” particularly targets the “green” mission of the EU and outlines how AI can help reach both the goals of lowering carbon emissions and boosting European competitiveness and productivity.

In this report, and throughout Google’s climate discourse, the company emphasizes the potential for AI to accelerate sustainability goals. The report offers three pillars: promote the uptake of AI, deploy AI for social and environmental goals, and guide AI’s sustainable development. With regards to the latter, Google presents a dual solution: more “carbon-free” energy (decarbonization) and more efficiency. Beyond this solution, the report presents a techno-optimistic, fact-free narrative about how “AI can revolutionize the EU’s approach to climate change mitigation and adaptation.”

Like OpenAI, Google tailors a very different message to the US than it does to the EU. In May 2025, Google presented a roadmap for the United States titled “Powering a New Era of American Innovation,” emphasizing AI as the enabler of economic expansion. This report avoids any discussion of the climate crisis and never mentions sustainability, instead speaking of “abundant resources” that can foster growth. Ironically, the US roadmap discusses energy not in terms of sustainability, but in terms of reliance and affordability.

The US-focused statements made by OpenAI and Google are clearly reflected in Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan, published by the US government in July 2025. The plan, fully in line with corporate interests and rhetoric, opens with US President Trump expressing his wish to “achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance” and to “harness the full power of American innovation.” The report sets out a plan to build the “largest AI ecosystem” by removing barriers and supplying the industry with limitless resources. The plan’s motto is “Build, Baby, Build,” and it rejects “radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape.” Unsurprisingly, the environmental impact of rapid AI growth and its consequences for citizens of the US and elsewhere remain undiscussed. The interests of the US government and Big Tech companies are aligned in a mission focused on radical AI growth, with no room for discussion of its limitations and its potentially detrimental effects. Can and will the EU take a stand against this race to the bottom?

The EU cannot have it all

The OpenAI and Google examples demonstrate how US tech companies position themselves differently vis-à-vis Europe and the United States. OpenAI and Google tactically address the respective political preferences of powerful governments. Harnessing the AI-race frame, both OpenAI and Google state how the EU can create the best possible (market) conditions for a prosperous AI future. How this future will come about remains entirely unclear.

Big Tech’s promises to develop AI infrastructure faster while optimizing sustainability, enhancing democracy, and increasing competitiveness seem too good to be true — which in fact they are. Not surprisingly, their claims are remarkably low on details and far removed from the reality of these companies’ immense carbon emissions. Bigger and faster AI is simply incompatible with greener and better AI. And yet, one of the main reasons why Big Tech companies’ claims sound agreeable is that the EU’s AI Continent Action Plan fails to define clear conditions and set priorities in how to achieve better and greener AI.

So what kind of changes does the EU AI-CAP need? First, it needs to set clear goalposts on what constitutes a democratic and responsible use of AI, even if this happens at the expense of economic competitiveness. The current plan shows how the EU hovers between competing in a global market race while maintaining “its own distinctive approach.” Indeed, the EU wants to become a global leader in developing “trustworthy and human-centric AI” that safeguards fundamental rights. However, the report lacks an overarching vision on how such outcomes can be realized. By keeping this unclear, the plan runs the risk of stimulating AI for the sake of AI, thereby reinforcing the global AI divide. Adhering to the “competitive race” frame, the EU stimulates the demand for AI without setting clear objectives for what purposes AI applications and infrastructures need to be developed.

Second, the AI-CAP’s “bigger and faster” frame prioritizes the speed of developments, expressed through claims that the EU needs to harness the potential of AI quickly. By doing so, the EU proposes an approach not unlike Silicon Valley’s “move fast, break things” mantra. This vision is at odds with the EU’s wish, also expressed in the plan, to act with ambition and foresight. Instead, the “better and greener” frame could be much better articulated, weighing quantity (bigger) against quality (better) and speed (faster) against sustainability (greener), meanwhile amplifying Europe’s priorities.

Third, the AI-CAP should acknowledge that unbridled AI growth is irreconcilable with the EU’s climate goals. Currently, the words “environment” and “climate” only appear in relation to the sustainable potential of AI, while environmental impact remains untouched. AI growth and a tripling of EU datacenter capacity are presented as a given. Sustainability is only addressed through vague claims, for example, when addressing how AI Gigafactories “will integrate massive computing power, exceeding 100,000 advanced AI processors, while taking into account power capacity, as well as energy, water efficiency, and circularity.” Through such claims, environmental challenges are reduced to operational issues of managing energy grids and optimizing water and energy use. The need for resources is accepted, not critically questioned.

In short, the AI-CAP misses directionality because it switches between competitive leadership and developing AI in line with public values, presenting rapid AI growth as a given instead of foregrounding sustainable AI as a priority. As long as the EU holds on to this “have it all” vision of AI growth, the EU — despite its critical view of Big Tech and its ongoing attempts to regulate these companies — reproduces the Silicon Valley dream to create an energy-driven AI future controlled by US companies.

Green conditions for AI infrastructures

The EU should develop a purpose-driven approach to AI, setting conditions for AI development grounded in the reality of the climate crisis. Such a proactive approach requires the EU to set its priorities straight and to question: How can AI technologies and infrastructures be developed in Europe with respect to climate goals? What AI applications will be prioritized? And how to ensure their environmental impact is limited? Reiterating Mariana Mazzucato and colleagues: the EU must be a guiding party in orchestrating “public value maximization.” Creating such an AI future starts with directionality and setting clear goals, but also requires careful guidance and monitoring throughout the development and implementation of AI.

The EU cannot have it all: bigger and faster AI does not align with better and greener AI. It is time for a vision on AI that acknowledges the fallacy of such promises, moving from a race paradigm to a paradigm grounded in the EU’s democratic values and rights, and its plan for a just, green, and digital transition. Such a paradigm could take inspiration from approaches that center on digital degrowth, conditional computing, or digital sufficiency.

Europe should be aware of the value of its regulatory strength in creating a better (democratic) and greener (sustainable) AI ecosystem, rather than letting corporations set the terms for the future of AI, nor giving in to the push for digital and environmental deregulation. To prevent EU policy from being manipulated by corporate narratives, the benefits of a value-driven approach to AI should be clearly communicated through all of the EU’s policy documents, starting with its AI Continent Plan.