Leaders of AI use in the EU: Denmark, Finland, and Luxembourg.

The Center for City Development Policy continues its series of publications devoted to the study of the use of artificial intelligence in organizations and companies.

Previous material: Enterprises are actively learning to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) in their workflows

In our previous article, we reported that in 2023, 30.4% of large enterprises used at least one of the AI technologies, while only 13% of medium-sized businesses and only 6.4% of small businesses used AI.

The use of artificial intelligence in Europe is extremely high and in some countries (Finland, Denmark, Belgium) is comparable to McKinsey estimates for global leading companies (55% in 2023, 72% in 2024).

We would like to analyze the situation in various EU countries in more detail, examining how companies implement solutions in the field of artificial intelligence.

We analyzed the impact of how enterprises implement artificial intelligence solutions depending on the salaries of employees. Our analysis shows a stable pattern - the intensive use of artificial intelligence is directly related to high salaries of employees in the field of artificial intelligence.

At the same time, among European countries, a clear group of leaders has emerged - Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland. These countries are distinguished by high wages of workers and a high level of artificial intelligence.

According to our estimates, the main reason for the high popularity of artificial intelligence in the most developed countries is the presence of world-leading companies. These companies are implementing artificial intelligence programs within the framework of tasks to increase productivity, global competitiveness and sustainable development.

It is quite interesting that the pattern is also observed for small businesses. But, characteristically, the use of artificial intelligence solutions among small businesses in the sector in these countries is much lower - only 6.4%.

Artificial intelligence solutions are most widespread in high-income countries - Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway.

If we examine the situation at the level of the European Union, then in almost all major industries, the leading countries are Denmark, Finland and Luxembourg.

We would like to see what places countries occupy in the ranking?

Among the European leaders are Denmark (15.2%), Finland (15.1%) and Luxembourg (14.4%), which exceeds the European average by 2 times. These countries are leaders in almost all industries. Among the leading countries are also Malta and Belgium (4 hits in the Top 3).

Let's try to analyse what tools these countries use to support the spread of artificial intelligence.

Denmark: National AI strategy

We believe that the key is the strategy chosen by Denmark, which has been implemented in practice since 2019. The Danish Government published its National AI strategy in the period before the market boom - in 2019. Among the priorities of the strategy were not only issues of ethical development and human-centrism, but also measures aimed at encouraging the growth of Danish businesses by developing and using AI.

The key priorities of the strategy include:

• support for the responsible development and use of AI;

• special Common Danish Language Resource aimed at collecting, developing and displaying Danish language data, language models and language tools;

• expansion of the number of public datasets published by the Danish government and ready for use by businesses, researchers, and public authorities.

• support for key AI projects in the fields of health, social welfare, and employment;

• expansion of investment programs in AI projects of Danish businesses.

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‍Finland: Finland’s age of artificial intelligence & Artificial Intelligence 4.0

Finland was one of the first EU countries to adopt an artificial intelligence development strategy in 2017. Among the priorities that Finland identified were increasing the competitiveness of companies and enterprise-driven ecosystems, creating infrastructure and opportunities for data utilisation, and adopting artificial intelligence.

The need to create in-house expertise and attract top experts, and support decisions and investments was particularly noted. In the Artificial Intelligence 4.0 program, the development directions were further clarified. Among the key development directions of the strategy:

• reconfiguring support and funding programs for R&D of key AI technologies;

• launching new programs to support Industry 5.0 SME,

• promoting performance computing (including AI) and best AI practices introduced in operations;

• developing educational programs for employees and employers;

• supporting sharing experience of AI implementation projects, creating a special tool 'AI-envoys'

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Artificial intelligence: a strategic vision for Luxembourg

In 2019, Luxembourg defined its strategic and ambitious goals:

• to be among the most advanced digital societies in the world, especially in the EU;

• to become a data-driven and sustainable economy;

• to support human-centric AI development.

Luxembourg named 7 areas as priorities:

• regulatory sandboxes and the implementation of applied AI, especially in personalized medicine, preventive healthcare, diagnosis and treatment of diseases, connected and autonomous mobility (co-projects with France and Germany), health data hub in biomedicine and personalized medicine, international/cross-border datasets of financial data and etc.

• new data market: innovative regulation of data marketplaces, relaunching the government’s open data policy and attracting the data-driven and data-centric services and businesses.

• ethics and data protection measures, including the development of national data protection authority and advisory committees on ethics.

• investments and strategic partnerships support: promoting HPC (high performance computing) and EuroHPC initiative, 5G pilot zones promotion, support of joint projects in AI sphere;

• support of AI in the public sector: analysis of best practices of AI use for the government, peer-to-peer learning with other countries.

• developing digital training modules for the general public, introduction of new education opportunities in existing programs, talent attraction strategy.

• international cooperation: support of European AI research centers, cross-border and community projects support.

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In our opinion, the systemic measures in all these countries are comprehensive in nature – support for the development and implementation of AI solutions in priority industries, support for education and attracting new talent, increasing data openness, ethical policies and data protection.

In general, we believe that support measures are currently focused on large and medium-sized businesses, the creation and implementation of new innovative new AI products. This is the right approach, as it creates opportunities for the implementation of AI and increased availability in industries, scaling the solution.

The most important task for increasing the use of AI among small and micro businesses is to increase the availability of affordable solutions. For example, BairesDevBlog notes that among the products that can be used by AI are Marketing automation, CRM solutions, Language translation, Chatbots. The peculiarity of the projects is that they can be used in all industries and require only minor modifications.

Among the key solutions that could help are technology hubs, exhibitions and training programs. They have already been launched in various countries in the format of promoting company.

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Sources:

[1] Eurostat: isoc_eb_ai, lc_lci_r2_q

[2] CDP.Center: Enterprises are actively learning to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) in their workflows

https://www.cdp.center/post/enterprises-are-actively-learning-to-integrate-artificial-intelligence-ai-in-their-workflows

[3] Denmark: National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence

https://en.digst.dk/strategy/the-danish-national-strategy-for-artificial-intelligence/

[4] Finland: Artificial Intelligence 4.0

https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/164468/TEM_2022_63.pdf

[5] Finland: Finland’s age of artificial intelligence

https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/160391/TEMrap_47_2017_verkkojulkaisu.pdf

[6] Artificial intelligence: a strategic vision for Luxembourg