Draghi’s argument risks skirting AI’s big questions

From Alberto Alemanno, Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law, HEC Paris, France © Frederick Florin/AFP/Getty

OCT 6 2026 1

Mario Draghi presents faster AI adoption as the route to restoring European growth and competitiveness (“Europe’s difficult choices on AI”, Opinion, FT Weekend, September 12). But his argument risks skirting the more consequential questions: who gains, who loses, whose power is strengthened, and whether AI adoption automatically advances broad-based prosperity at all. Yet faster uptake of AI is not an economic strategy if the benefits concentrate while its costs fall on workers and communities. Labour displacement and the concentration of economic and political power must be addressed well before AI’s productivity gains accumulate. Those factors should help decide which AI Europe builds, deploys and rewards. Europe was right to regulate AI before its consequences were fully known. It should not now let competitiveness turn speed into an end, rather than a means to shared prosperity and stronger democratic power. Alberto Alemanno Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law, HEC Paris, France