A thought experiment for regulating AI in two distinct regimes is what I call The Island. In this scenario, experts trying to build God-like AGI systems do so in a highly secure facility: an air-gapped enclosure with the best security humans can build. All other attempts to build God-like AI would become illegal; only when such AI were provably safe could they be commercialised “off-island”. This may sound like Jurassic Park, but there is a real-world precedent for removing the profit motive from potentially dangerous research and putting it in the hands of an intergovernmental organisation. This is how Cern, which operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, has worked for almost 70 years. [...] I would support significant regulation by governments and a practical plan to transform these companies into a Cern-like organisation. (2024) source Unverified

CAIRNE envisions a “CERN for AI”—a pan-European initiative that will create a distributed network of AI research centers, with a central hub serving as a focal point for collaboration, innovation, and ethical AI development. This initiative will drive AI research that aligns with European values, ensuring that the continent remains at the forefront of technological progress. 2018: The initial vision outlined a distributed network of AI Centres of Excellence with a central hub, inspired by CERN’s success in physics. 2025: The “Moonshot in Artificial Intelligence” proposal was developed, aiming to position Europe as a leader in trustworthy AI by 2030. (2025) source Unverified

The initiative, which was founded in June 2018, advocates an "AI made in Europe" that takes fundamental European values into account. As a European response to the global AI competition, it brings together stakeholders from research, industry, politics, and society throughout Europe and involves them in the discussion of new research topics, technologies and solutions. CLAIRE's concrete objectives include the further development of competence centers, which will be strategically distributed across Europe, and a central hub, data and compute infrastructure as CERN for AI. “CERN is an excellent example of what we want to achieve with CLAIRE. Nuclear research is carried out by many excellent researchers and laboratories spread across Europe and the world. But through coordination, their research gains much more influence and recognition in all fields.” (2019) source Unverified

Surman believes that Europe should join forces with countries such as Japan, India, and Canada to pull their AI resources together. For example, if Switzerland uses 10,000 of its research GPUs – which perform mathematical calculations that are key for AI – and Canada puts forward its research computers, and these resources are put towards open source infrastructure, then you “incent researchers to work together and you get quite naturally this idea of the CERN for AI,” he said. “Not because you going and build one Large Hadron Collider,” he added, referring to the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), but because you just pool digital resources that people are already spending money on. “[…] If you put a different technical and economic lens on how you organise the work there, Europe and potentially your collaborators are well-situated both to catch up and to leap ahead,” he said. (2025) source Unverified

A CERN for AI needs strong talent clustering. Top researchers want to work with other top researchers. Unlike the talent concentration in Silicon Valley, European AI talent is more fragmented across hubs like Zurich, Paris, Berlin, and Barcelona. Speakers echoed calls from the Centre for Future Generations and CLAIRE/CAIRNE to consolidate research efforts across Europe in order to foster serendipitous innovation. As highlighted by the Centre for Future Generations, this is compatible with multiple, geographically separate AI Gigafactories. […] while it would be impossible to create a “de novo” AI talent hub within a brief period of time, an existing AI talent ecosystem can be chosen as a starting point for a CERN for AI hub. (2025) source Unverified

The EC White Paper on AI, which was published in February 2020, however, called for something that bears resemblance to a CERN for AI, namely “a lighthouse center of research, innovation, and expertise that would coordinate [AI] efforts and be a world reference of excellence in AI” (European Commission 2020: 6; emphasis added). This mention of an AI lighthouse is surprising because according to several interviewed EC officials, the lengthy public consultations running up to the AI White Paper had clearly shown that a majority in the AI community did not favor a central AI hub (INT19), but instead supported a federal, decentralized network of AI excellence centers (INT12). Officially, critics of CERN for AI maintain that there is no need to create a central AI research hub because computing infrastructure can be distributed, as can research teams. (2025) source Unverified

Ideas for a centralised approach in developing the European AI landscape run the risk of undermining the wider goals of the EU's AI strategy. While meeting no immediate need – AI research does not require access to centralised, expensive and unique physical facilities and infrastructures in the way that fields such as particle physics might require – a central research body risks isolating AI research from the sectors, research communities and citizens that it should serve. Faced with a situation where a centralised site in a single member country absorbs large parts of future EU funding, but not the talent (which is the most likely outcome), AI talent currently working at the most dynamic European centres of AI excellence may even consider moving to top AI hotspots overseas. A multi-centric laboratory with strong institutions in all parts of Europe will generate real innovation for Europe, best leverage Europe’s cultural diversity, and integrate European values in the development of future technology. This will ensure that Europe does not become a mere consumer of AI technology developed elsewhere, building on other values, but instead builds a genuine “AI made in Europe”. source Unverified

Researchers have also raised concerns that giving a centralized institution access to the advanced AI models of leading labs might compromise the security of those labs and models. For example, effective access to design evaluations and benchmarks may require the ability to copy a given model, which could undermine the commercial interests of those labs and enable diffusion of those models before adequate testing. This may be less of an issue for mechanistic interpretability and similar research, which may not require access to the latest models. Lastly, a CERN for AI would have to grapple with rising geopolitical tensions. It is arguably harder today to start an international governance body than it was in the era immediately after the Second World War. Most leading AI labs are based in the US and China, two countries that are arguably engaged in a ‘new cold war’ that is fuelling a technological arms race between them. (2024) source Unverified

With Europe being outspent by Asia and North America when it comes to AI research, the European Commission has warned that the continent “cannot afford to maintain the current fragmented landscape” in which no research centre has “the scale necessary to compete with the leading institutes globally”. To remedy that, Brussels wants Europe to have a “lighthouse centre of research, innovation and expertise” that will become a “world reference of excellence in AI” that hosts “the best talents in the field”. (2020) source Unverified

I spent a lot of years hoping that the collaboration would occur, and there are many people in our industry who think that the arrival and development of this new intelligence is so important, it should be done in a multinational way. It should be done in the equivalent of CERN, which is the great physics laboratory, which is global in Switzerland. The political tensions and the stress over values is so great. There’s just no scenario. There’s just — I want to say it again, there’s just no scenario where you can do that. (2024) source Verified

This has the advantage of bringing everyone on board. All parts of Europe would be included and have transparent and easy access, A physical institute in a single location would be outdated in the era of home working. (2024) source Unverified

I’d love for there to be an International CERN, basically, for AI, where you get the top researchers in the world and you go: Look, let’s focus on the final few years of this project […] and really get it right. (2025) source Unverified

It is much more feasible, cost-efficient and also quality-wise better to expand with the current concepts than to start from scratch. I think the win-win situation in Europe and EuroHPC is when we are able to provide different kinds of resources for different kinds of needs, with the same ecosystem, (2024) source Unverified

‘Critical mass’ is the word that we really like. You really have to integrate all of Europe. Whenever you’re there, you’re surrounded by the top people, (2020) source Unverified