At the Rise of AI Summit 2020, Andre Loesekrug-Pietri, Executive Director of the Joint European Disruptive Initiative (JEDI), a body he describes as a European DARPA, argues that AI is both a threat to and a potential tool for democracy. Nine months earlier, around a hundred scientists, deep-tech founders and corporates, now several thousand across 29 countries, concluded that Europe cannot only play defense on technology and must invent breakthroughs, not just regulate. He argues AI-augmented decision-making, illustrated by aerospace predictive maintenance, could give democracies the long-term compass that authoritarian states already use, citing China's 2025 and 2049 plans against Europe's crisis-to-crisis management. He describes how fake news and platform-driven echo chambers undermine public debate, citing Cambridge Analytica and a claim that Donald Trump made 20,000 false statements in 1,300 days. He presents deepfakes, built on generative adversarial networks, as a frontier where detection is inherently hard, and announces JEDI's Deepfake Grand Challenge, targeting 99 percent detection faster than a video's own length. He also flags civilian surveillance uses of AI and proposes distributed face recognition and homomorphic encryption as privacy-preserving alternatives, arguing for transparency over bans.
Key takeaways
- JEDI grew from about 100 to several thousand people across 29 countries in nine months, modeled on DARPA.
- Loesekrug-Pietri cites a claim that Donald Trump made 20,000 false statements in 1,300 days.
- JEDI's Deepfake Grand Challenge targets 99 percent detection accuracy faster than a video's own runtime.
- He says roughly half of UN member states now actively use civilian AI surveillance technology.
- He says 95 percent of deepfakes today are pornographic and increasingly linked to ransomware and blackmail.
Detailed notes
JEDI's mission: Europe cannot only play defense
Loesekrug-Pietri describes the Joint European Disruptive Initiative, founded nine months earlier by around a hundred scientists and now grown to several thousand people across 29 countries, including academia, the deep-tech ecosystem and large corporates. He frames it as a European equivalent of DARPA, built on the premise that Europe can tax and regulate more but will still lose if defense is its only strategy; the mission is to invent the next big technology, not merely protect against existing ones.
How AI reshapes decision-making
He argues AI is transforming how organizations and democracies make decisions, drawing on aerospace predictive maintenance, where AI cross-correlates thousands of data points per second that humans could never process by hand, as an analogy for the compass democracies currently lack. He contrasts Europe's pattern of moving from one crisis council and emergency recovery plan to the next with China's long-term planning, such as its 2025 and 2049 targets, warning that authoritarian states benefit from offering citizens a clear vision that fragmented Western societies increasingly lack.
Fake news, echo chambers and platform business models
Loesekrug-Pietri argues that fake news has never been more consequential, citing Cambridge Analytica and a claim that Donald Trump made 20,000 false statements over 1,300 days. He attributes this partly to platforms whose business model rewards engagement through algorithmically reinforced echo chambers, segmenting an open internet into groups that no longer talk to each other, which he says is the worst possible outcome for public debate, the core of democracy.
The Deepfake Grand Challenge
He describes deepfakes, built on generative adversarial networks, as one of AI's true frontiers because detection systems that flag a flaw prompt the generating system to correct itself. He criticizes leaving detection to platforms such as Facebook, which launched its own deepfake challenge, arguing platforms should not also decide what counts as true. He illustrates the economic stakes with hypothetical deepfakes of a bank CEO announcing a cash crisis or a luxury brand using banned materials, either able to destroy value before it can be disproven, and announces JEDI's own Deepfake Grand Challenge, with a global scientific committee and a prize for reaching 99 percent detection accuracy in less time than the video itself runs.
Surveillance, distributed recognition and encryption
He notes that roughly half of UN member states now actively use civilian AI surveillance technology, largely from US and Chinese vendors such as IBM, Palantir and Cisco, and gives examples from Sweden, where police use facial recognition without the regulator initially being informed, and France, where several cities accepted free camera infrastructure from a large Chinese vendor, with Saint-Etienne testing sound-based detection of violent acts. He argues the issue is not banning such technology but ensuring transparency, and proposes two technical responses: face recognition distributed across individual cameras using small data rather than centralized databases, modeled on the resilience of early internet architecture, and homomorphic encryption to let large data pools be used without merging them or exposing individuals to reverse engineering.
Q&A highlights
Asked whether the challenge can end the deepfake arms race, Loesekrug-Pietri says it cannot once and for all, comparing it to DARPA staff rotating out after two years to keep pace with fast-moving technology, and argues Europe needs pop-up regulations revisited every six to twelve months rather than rules meant to last twenty years. Asked how a single solution could work across a federalist EU, he says JEDI, structured as a foundation, will support multiple approaches that meet its criteria rather than fund one winner. Asked about deepfakes and blackmail, he says 95 percent of deepfakes today are pornographic and increasingly tied to ransomware targeting mostly female celebrities. Asked whether liberal democracies can compete with authoritarian efficiency, he says democracies need both long-term vision and agility, warning that what happened in the United States under four years of Trump could happen in Europe too.
Quotes
Democracy is not about regulation, democracy is about transparency and empowerment of the individual.
Andre Loesekrug-Pietri
We should not build the regulation that lasts 20 years, this is impossible. We need to have pop-up regulations that are as fast as the technology.
Andre Loesekrug-Pietri
If you talk diversity, if you talk about women empowerment, and if you're not talking deep fake, you're missing something very big.
Andre Loesekrug-Pietri
Questions answered in this talk
What percentage of deepfakes today are pornographic?
According to Andre Loesekrug-Pietri at the Rise of AI Summit 2020, about 95 percent of deepfakes today are pornographic, and they are increasingly connected to ransomware targeting mostly female celebrities.
What is JEDI's Deepfake Grand Challenge trying to achieve?
According to Andre Loesekrug-Pietri at the Rise of AI Summit 2020, the Joint European Disruptive Initiative's Deepfake Grand Challenge aims for 99 percent detection accuracy achieved in less time than the video itself takes to play.
How does Andre Loesekrug-Pietri think Europe should regulate AI?
According to Andre Loesekrug-Pietri at the Rise of AI Summit 2020, Europe should use pop-up regulations revisited every six to twelve months rather than rules meant to last twenty years, since technology moves faster than traditional regulation.