The Unseen Dangers of AI Companions for Teenagers and How Governments Are Responding

So the sudden shifts, so actually before diving into this week's chaotic news cycle, a quick ground level perspective for me after traveling this week around Europe in the European tech circuit, because two big things happened.

So there was VivaTech in Paris.

So the energy at Paris Expo port de Versailles was entirely dominated by the shift towards absolute infrastructure autonomy and digital sovereignty.

A massive highlight was actually Jean LeCun's first major public appearance since leaving Meta to start advanced machine intelligence labs.

And he explicitly called out companies like Anthropic for lobbying to make open source AI effectively illegal, arguing that scaling up current large language models is a dead end for true intelligence.

And we also saw a massive push for localized tech.

So Orange's CEO noted that the critical question is no longer who has the best model, but who controls the underlying servers.

IBM actually even echoed this by showcasing their new Sovereign Core platform to help organizations build compliantly, tightly-walled AI environments.

I mean, I love the colors.

The city was completely turned into like a tech spectacle.

Literally amazing.

I recommend anyone who wants to go to go next year.

I also want to thank Techmakers for giving me the ticket to go.

So that was really nice.

And also in Amsterdam, we had Amsterdam Tech Week.

Because back in the Netherlands, the vibe was a sharp, pragmatic contrast.

The focus was also heavily on practical developer tooling, decentralized networks, and also European startups navigating the strict realities of the ecosystem.

What I saw mostly is the contrast between the grand geopolitical chess matches in Paris and the ground level building in Amsterdam shows Europe is actually aggressively preparing to build its own independent tech

future.

So I would say we're really seeing Europe's massive push for digital sovereignty in Paris perfectly frames the absolute whiplash of the global news that dropped the second I got back.

And it's so cool just seeing, you know, Europe flourish and like build its own kind of tech communities.

I think America has such a distinct tech culture, but Europe is really kind of building their own.

I mean, rather they already have it, but I guess enhancing what's already there.

And this summer alone, I mean, I've seen so many initiatives and, you know, it looks like For example, I came to Ireland like five or six years ago.

And I mean, obviously, we always had like big tech companies, Google, Meta, like we always had the tech companies, but we didn't have the same community that we do now.