Governments should not regulate AI says VC founder

The CEO of one of Portugal’s most important venture capital funds, Indico Capital Partners, says over-regulating Artificial Intelligence could leave Portugal and Europe behind the rest of the world in this domain.

Stephan Morais, in an interview “Chats with CEOs” with the newspaper Negócios as part of its series Sustainability 20|30 whose main theme was on the challenges of energy and digital transition, said of AI that the speed of changes meant that market solutions are “much more efficient and faster” than those of governments.

And he has warned against falling into the temptation of regulating AI because Europe will run the risk of lagging behind since China would not regulate to the same extent.

As for the role of funds in energy, digital and social transition investments, he said that today’s largest companies are tech companies which did not start from governments or large corporations.

“Many of them started out in ‘garages’ with private capital funding as Indico did. This type of capital allowed bold ideas to see the light of day. Environmental and social sustainability can only be achieved through technology. We will not get people to significantly reduce their consumption, or stop developing countries from polluting,” he said.

On AI, Stephan Morais said that Indico has been investing in these companies for 10 years with Unbabel (a Portuguese DNA machine-based translation company) being the first. “All of the companies today we’re looking at (investing in) have an AI strategy”.