PwC Economy Day Event Delves into Opportunities & Issues of Adopting AI

On Monday 24 March 2025, PWC hosted a “Journée de l'Economie” (Economy Day) event at the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

The event, moderated by Director at Fondation IDEA Asbl, Vincent Hein, asked participants and attendees to question if AI is overhyped, imperative or a real opportunity and featured a number of guest speakers, including Luxembourg’s Minister of the Economy, SMEs, Energy and Tourism, Lex Delles, and President of European Investment Bank Group, Nadia Calviño.

To open the event, Mr Hein welcomed guests and attendees and detailed the programme for the afternoon. He then announced that the organisers planned to donate the event’s registration fees to Luxembourg-based non-profit organisation Mouvement pour l'Egalité des Chances (MEC - Movement for Equal Opportunities), whose mission is to promote social cohesion in the country. Mr Hein then invited Director General of the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, Carlo Thelen, to the stage to deliver the opening address.

Mr Thelen first went into detail about a 2024 study by the Implement Consulting Group, highlighting how the early adoption of AI technologies could significantly increase productivity in the public and private sectors. The report detailed that 63% of the companies consulted planned to invest in emerging AI technologies within the next three years. He then went into detail about the working groups at the Chamber of Commerce currently drafting recommendations in a bid to accelerate AI development and deployment across all sectors in a bid to position Luxembourg as a major European AI partner. He then touched on the widening GDP gap between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) and the need for the EU to increase and diversify investment resources. He emphasised that: “Luxembourg can become the entry point for third-country companies looking to establish themselves in the EU and to test the compliance of their AI products in a supervised environment,” adding: “Luxembourg must fully leverage on the existing and future infrastructure to position itself as an AI hub. Businesses must capitalise on Meluxina, Luxembourg's high-performance computer to develop sovereign and scalable AI solutions at both the national and European level.” In closing, Mr Thelen emphasised the commitment of the Chamber of Commerce in advancing its AI strategy for the benefit of Luxembourg’s economy.

Vincent Hein then invited Minister Lex Delles to the stage, where he spoke of the importance of creating an AI ecosystem and how, “It is one of the priorities of the government to give the accessibility of artificial intelligence to all the companies here in Luxembourg, from the smallest to the largest.” Minister Delles then provided details on the Luxembourg government’s recently announced AI and cybersecurity support packages for SMEs, which offer funding for up to 70% of the implementation costs of artificial intelligence and/or cyber security systems within a company. He also spoke of the Luxembourg government’s investment in the Meluxina supercomputer and the creation of an AI support network in Luxembourg which can provide expert information and assistance for the implementation and management of AI systems in the country’s businesses. In closing, Minister Delles emphasised: “I have always said that a company that is not digitised today will no longer be able to exist tomorrow. And today we can say that of artificial intelligence. A company that does not have artificial intelligence systems within its company is a company that will have a lot of difficulty in being able to exist tomorrow.”

The next speaker, EIB President, Nadia Calviño, talked of her experience with emerging technologies during her time as Spain’s Minister for Economy and Digitalisation and how she recognised AI as “one of the key issues of our times”. Ms Calviño then went into detail about the current adoption of AI at an industrial level and how it is already integrated into systems across Europe which deal with energy, healthcare and security. She then proclaimed that: “This is just the beginning. Nobody really knows where this can take us. Artificial intelligence can really benefit and improve our way of life, if it is properly funded, adequately harnessed and efficiently integrated.” In closing, Ms Calviño spoke of how Europe can play a key role in the development of AI through its “reputation for stability, its confidence and its clear outlook for the future,” adding: “When we interact with our counterparts, they see Europe as a key partner because we're trying to build win-win solutions where both parts of the agreement are actually winning out of that agreement.”

It was then the turn of the first keynote speaker, Chief Scientist Officer at Renault Group, Dr Luc Julia, to address the audience. Doing so via a pre-recorded video, he spoke of AI as a technical revolution which “helps find solutions to complex problems, it facilitates imitation and learning and it can become self-improving”. To emphasise this, he provided comparisons of the impact of the electrical and IT revolutions of the 20th century and their effects on productivity within their first ten years of adoption. He then compared these values to the potential productivity benefits of AI to show that similar gains could be realised in both existing domains and in innovation. Dr Julia went on to discuss how competitiveness influences innovation and that there is a need to reform institutions to ensure that the field of AI is not dominated by a handful of large technology companies, in the way in which firms such as Microsoft, Google, Nvidia and Amazon have with IT development, search engine functionality, hardware development and cloud storage. In closing, he stated: “My view is that AI has a big growth potential, but to harness the growth potential of AI, we need to reform our institutions in particular to have a competition policy, to make sure that the AI revolution will not be dominated by just a few large firms that will make entry of new innovators increasingly difficult.”

The second keynote speaker for the day was Economist and Professor at the College de France, INSEAD Business School and the London School of Economics, Philippe Aghion. Prof Aghion provided a more pragmatic opinion on the benefits of AI technology, where he emphasised the downsides and dangers of existing AI technology. In his speech, he detailed that AI technology is not new, with the mathematics utilised by existing AI systems being first developed in the 1950s and that current AI systems are simply an extension of the development of Machine Learning, first pioneered in the 1990s. He then detailed the danger of how poor quality data can influence the results of modern AI systems. He referenced a study by the University of Hong Kong, undertaken in 2023, which tested the veracity of output from ChatGPT. When asked to qualify a variety of known facts, ChatGPT displayed a success rate of only 64%. To demonstrate this further, Prof Aghion described how he periodically employed an AI system to create a biography of his life so that he could check the accuracy of the output. He confirmed that on each occasion the AI inserted incorrect information into his life story. Prof Aghion stated: “Remember, [AI technologies] are meant to please you. They are meant to give you an answer, whatever it is. It's not meant to give you a right answer," adding: “What is the accuracy of those AIs? It's very, very complicated to calculate because if you believe that the Earth is flat and you ask the AI, show me that the Earth is flat, it will tell you that the Earth is flat.” In closing, Prof Aghion touched on the environmental impact of AI through its energy requirements and how its usage of water to maintain the functionality of its technological infrastructure is a serious problem. He highlighted how a request for ChatGPT to write a 100-word email uses an average of one and a half litres of water and how the training of that AI for that task required 5.4 million litres of water. Closing on a more pragmatic note, Prof Aghion’s stated: “I’m not saying that we shouldn't use it. I'm saying that we need to understand the balance between using it and not using it.”

After the conclusion of the speeches, experts led a number of panel discussions to explore the topics raised. These were followed by a question and answer session and a networking event.

SM