Excellent article. I don't think the possibility of success is that bad, but they have to take it seriously and also seriously invest (germany doesn't...at the moment!). I think in contrast to other technologies, the EU has a few thing going for them (from a german perspective):

- There are some important industries that are very much interested in AI (for example the automotive industry). So serious private-sector money could be raised.

- Europe has the ability to pull of large-scale research projects and has the experience to do so. From LHC to the various institutions, like the Helmholtz-society or the DKFZ in germany (the EU also made some errors in preview large-scale research projects to learn from).

- The brains are there. I see many (very!) talented and dedicated students and researchers here and the research infrastructure (universities, non-university research agencies) is also established and quite diverse.

- I see that there's an understanding that entrepreneurship and non-traditional industries is an area in which the EU has been falling behind. I feel like it's improving.

I also don't think we're too late yet.

I see two main obstacles:

- lack of serious investment from public and private (this requires realising what a significant investment looks like). This is at the moment quite obvious if you follow the bmbf (german federal research agency). It seems like they don't realise how insignificant creating a few research groups is.

- no coherent strategy. Spreading everything thin without a thought where to reach critical mass is wasting time and energy. This is a problem especially in germany and, of course, the EU. We need a physical, European AI research hub with enough things like conferences and exchange to the other research-institute to get traction.

EDIT: What makes me really angry and frustrated (because in the end I am more or less powerless) is the complete waste of potential in germany. We have many great universities here with a lot of great faculty. But most of the universites are seriously underfunded and not really well-maintained. Some universities are so poorly maintained that their buildings are uninhabitable because of danger of collapsing. It's crazy, it's just laying waste. I think that we in germany wouldn't be in this situation if our universities could seriously compete and could enable all their potential.