While last year’s edition of the Journée de l’Economie was focused on Luxembourg’s current competitiveness, identifying the critical success factors from recent years and defining their role in shaping the Grand Duchy’s trajectory for the future, this year’s dominating topics were related to the impact of AI across various sectors with a particular emphasis on the role of governments.

The discussion also endeavoured to explore how Luxembourg and Europe can achieve their digital ambitions, examining the benefits and challenges of AI and emerging technologies on businesses, as well as on energy and digital transition, and sharing insights on how these new technologies can transform the economic landscape.

The participants were welcomed by Vincent Hein, Director of the think tank IDEA. Mr Hein raised the following questions regarding AI techs: “Are we putting too much faith in something we barely know? Or on the contrary, is it an imperative? Are we standing at a crossroad of where our actions today will answer the questions of whether we are going to be sitting at the table or being put on the menu later? (…) How can we ensure that we are actively shaping the future of AI rather than merely reacting to it?” Those were the questions to be answered during the conference throughout the discussions with high level scientists, policy makers and entrepreneurs. Mr Hein reminded the audience that the ultimate goal is to determine the actions needed to address the current challenges.

The conference was opened by Carlo Thelen, Director General of the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, who first referred to the latest economic barometer by the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, highlighting that 63% of Luxembourg businesses, which believe that their business model will be impacted by emerging technologies, plan on investing in AI within three years. Mr Thelen emphasised that: “It is key for the public administrations to prioritise national and European solutions to support the development of the local ecosystem and to safeguard our sovereignty. The upcoming announcement of a new national AI strategy as well as the launch of the AI factory are important milestones on this journey”. Mr Thelen continued by stressing four priorities from a macroeconomic perspective: (1) the need to increase and diversify investment sources, (2) the implementation of the AI Act to promote innovation, (3) the need to leverage on existing and upcoming infrastructures and finally (4) the adoption of a communication strategy focused on establishing Luxembourg as an AI Hub.

Lex Delles, the Minister of Economy, laid out that it is one of the priorities of the Luxembourg government to give all the companies in Luxembourg access to AI, from the smallest to the biggest entities. As such, he mentioned the introduction of the SMEs package to provide the SMEs with the necessary tools for the implementation of AI as well as for the cybersecurity as both go hand in hand. He added that it is also a key priority for the government to have the right infrastructures. As such,
Mr Delles referred to an amount of EUR 120m to be invested in Luxembourg for MeluXina-AI, i.e. the supercomputer based on AI, half financed by the European Commission and the other half by the Luxembourg state. According to Mr Delles, “AI is no longer a myth, but a reality” and he asserted that in the past we used to say that “a business that is not digitalised today could no longer exist tomorrow.” He explained that the same applies for those ignoring AI due to the productivity gains achieved by their competitors using AI.

President of the European Investment Bank Group, Nadia Calviño first stressed that “AI is an incredible opportunity from a business point of view”. She shared her insights on three issues: (1) the benefits of AI, (2) Europe’s position as a competitor in the race and (3) “what we need to do to make it a European success”. Regarding the benefits of AI, Ms Calviño pointed to the significant gains of AI technologies, highlighting that “it is a booster for our competitiveness. There are industries in Europe that are already designing machinery that will then be used as prototypes to develop the new techniques from medical machinery to coffee machines, products that last longer, cost less and this is just the beginning”. She carried on: “AI can really benefit and improve our way of life if it is properly funded, adequately harnessed and efficiently integrated”. Then, Ms Calviño reminded the audience that Europe has the advantage of “racing as a team” in this fierce competition. As such, she emphasised the importance of having a European regulatory framework which allows to have a “risk-based approach” to scale up and enable companies to “really compete at a global level”. Finally, she asserted the three drivers for Europe competitiveness: (1) integration through the European capital market integration and the need to integrate AI capabilities into existing companies, (2) investment by mobilising the necessary investments from the private sector and finally (3) simplification of the rules and procedures.

Should we fear AI?

The audience was then shown a pre-recorded video from Prof. Philippe Aghion, Economist, Professor at the Collège de France, INSEAD, and at the London School of Economics. In his video, Prof. Aghion strengthened that the AI revolution affects all domains of activity, and the emergence of generative AI represents an unprecedented acceleration in this revolution. Prof. Aghion stressed that AI’s high growth potential may be hampered by an inappropriate competition policy. As such, he referred to the risk of monopolies with, for instance, the cloud service sector being dominated by three superstar firms, i.e. Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Therefore, he emphasised the need to reform competition policy to harness the growth potential of AI and to have the Digital Markets Act that applies to the whole value chain of AI. Prof. Aghion underlined the need to get away from the “winner takes all” mindset and to create a more inclusive market with diverse players.

GenAI: myth or reality?

Dr Luc Julia, Chief Scientific Officer at Renault Group addressed the provocative question “GenAI: myth or reality?” Dr Julia drew the audience’s attention on the fact that “AI technologies are just a bunch of tools. (…) They are very useful but for very specific tasks”. He carried on by explaining that AI started centuries ago in 1642 with the invention of Pascaline, i.e. the first calculator. Therefore, Dr Julia stressed the need to put things into perspective regarding the new “wave” of AI. As such, according to him, it is more accurate to talk about an “evolution” rather than a “revolution”. He explained that it is an evolution of the mathematical way to train the new algorithms with trillions of data points available. However, he underlined that the revolution lies in the usage of AI thanks to the prompt that anyone can use without any prior training. Dr Julia also stressed the fact that “generative AI” is not “creative AI”. “AI does not invent anything, AI does not create anything, we do!” Dr Julia addressed many key issues related to generative AI in his eye-opening speech such as accuracy and intellectual property. Finally, he raised the audience’s awareness on the impacts that the use of AI has on the environment. He reminded that, although the impacts of data centres on energy are well-known, their impacts on the other resources are less recognised, especially for water. He asserted that: “A bunch of queries of Chat GPT consumes 1.5 litres of water”, representing a major issue. As for the solutions, Dr Julia mentioned fine tuning and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) that should be focused on. Besides, he recommended to use Open-Source models, which allow to use more frugal and more specialised models. He stressed that the current generation of “generative AIs are dead today for the actual science part”. Therefore, Dr Julia’s final insight was that hybrid AIs should come up.

Time for Luxembourg & Europe to realise their digital ambitions!

Before the break, there was a panel of three keynote speakers, i.e. Gérard Hoffmann, Chief Executive Officer, Proximus Luxembourg, Ananda Kautz, Member of the management board – Innovation, Payments and Sustainability, ABBL and Jacques Thill, Digital Economy and Data Policy Coordinator, Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy, moderated by Gérard Cops,  Industry & Services Leader, PwC Luxembourg.

The speakers shared their insights on the following questions: What are the risks and opportunities of AI for Luxembourg? How can Luxembourg and Europe close the digital gap? What role do governments play in driving digital transformation?

Ms Kautz highlighted that the digital transformation is necessary in her perspective given the new customer expectations, the increasing regulations to be compliant with and the pressure on the operational costs currently encountered. She added that generative AI is a “game changer” for financial institutions, reminding that, according to many international studies, it is the financial sector that could potentially enjoy the most efficiency gains with the use of AI, due to the proportion of data in this sector. As raised before, Ms Kautz underlined the risk for players not embracing the technology to be left behind. She added the importance to have “strong leadership to take the right decisions” and to remain focus in order to keep up with the pace of the technologies.

Mr Hoffmann and Mr Thill both concurred on the fact that if Luxembourg wants to secure its economic model and its productivity growth, innovation is key. As such, “AI is a great instrument to gain productivity and to make our industries and economies more competitive” according to Mr Thill.

Moreover, on the question regarding the digital gap between the EU, US and Asia, Ms Kautz asserted that Luxembourg will never be in a position to compete with the US or China, but “the main asset of Luxembourg is to develop and take benefit of the European AI ecosystem”. Mr Thill pointed out the emergence of Open-Source models as a positive development. Yet, given the limited size of Luxembourg, he emphasised the need to specialise to “build smaller more targeted models (…) and build our strength”.

With regards to funding, Mr Hoffmann stressed that it has to be seen in relation to talents as talent retention in Europe will be enabled by providing the same type of funding that US has. In that regard, Luxembourg can contribute to close this gap, considering its role in the financial industry in Europe.

Energy transition & digitalisation: making distribution and consumption smarter. How can AI support this transition?

After the break, the audience was fully immersed in a live interview, conducted by Amanda Roberts, Founder LUX WMN & Professor (Miami University) with Dr Grégory Nain, Co-founder & Head of Operations, DataThings and Laurence Zenner, Chief Executive Officer, CREOS. During the live interview, the conversation covered a range of insightful topics, providing valuable perspectives on the role of digitalisation and AI, helping to optimise energy distribution and consumption.

Ms Zenner first reminded the audience of the increase of the energy needs and she explained the valuable help of AI to simulate grid scenarios and to forecast the demand and the production in order to “guarantee cost-efficient grid planning”. She added that AI can be used to detect congestion on the grids. As for the challenges in the implementation of AI, Ms Zenner stressed that the positive aspect is that data is available through the smart metres but the data is sensitive. Therefore, security data protection is very important, according to her. Further to a question on the emerging AI trends which should have the biggest impact on energy management in the next 5 to 10 years, Mr Nain emphasised that machine learning and AIs will help into getting a more dedicated and precise planning on the energy management to keep the balance within the ecosystem.

As a final takeaway from this engaging live interview, Ms Zenner highlighted that AI will play a prominent role in the energy sector for predictions to reinforce the grids and to avoid overinvestment in the future. As for Mr Nain, his advice was to fully embrace AI and to rediscover “our pioneering spirit in our industries and particularly in Luxembourg where we can make it happen”.

PwC’s Annual Global CEO Survey “Reinvention on the edge of tomorrow”

Cécile Liégeois, Clients and Markets Leader, PwC Luxembourg, provided the audience with a preview on some key aspects of the PwC’s annual global CEO survey before the release of the Luxembourg findings on 02 April 2025.

Ms Liégeois outlined the positive trends compared to the previous two years, globally and locally, with the confidence of the CEOs in the short-term and the medium-term regarding revenues growth. Regarding how AI is defining CEO’s landscape, Ms Liégeois mentioned that CEOs remain optimistic about GenAI’s impact on profitability, with 56% noting increased efficiencies – echoed by 63% of respondents in PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey and 32% in the Global Investor Survey. From a Luxembourg perspective, 61% of Luxembourg CEOs perceive that GenAI currently has a large positive impact on their own efficiency and 57% on their employees’. She concluded that in terms of the next step regarding AI deployment, it is important to be able to specialise and “to be able to measure the impact on the profitability”.

Is AI really transforming businesses?

The final discussion of the day was moderated by Gaston Trauffler, Head of Industrial Policy, FEDIL. He was joined by Maxime Allard, Co-founder, Helical, Véronique Martin-Lang, Chief engineer AI and Advanced Analytics, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, Marie-Hélène Massard, Deputy General Director, Foyer Group andStefano Perego, VP International Operations & Global Ops Services, AMAZON for a vivid discussion on how AI technologies are reshaping industries at an unprecedented pace, shedding light as well on the challenges and risks behind the AI revolution.

The panel was asked to address the following key questions: Are AI technologies genuinely poised to revolutionise our economy and businesses? How mature and affordable are key technologies? How can AI increase productivity? What are the risks?

Ms Massard reminded the audience of the highly regulated nature of the insurance sector. Despite this, she pointed out how Foyer integrated AI across various key elements of Foyer’s value chain, including risk management, compliance, claims management, fraud detection and prevention, supporting servicing at call centres and sales support amongst others. She explained how AI is an opportunity to enhance customer service and support her people by enabling them to dedicate more of their time on value added services. She reminded though that this is “not a one-day journey but a never-ending journey”.