Meryem Arik
Co-Founder & CEO, Doubleword
17 Jun 2026Fable 5 Recall, EU’s AI Plan, UK Ban U16 Socials, Le Chaton Fat, Hex Sponsor etn
Michael Backer: Europe 2031 & the AI Compute Gap
Michael Backer, DeepMind researcher and MIT professor and co-author of the viral Europe 2031 piece, explains why Europe must wake up: 75% of AI compute sits in the US versus 5% in Europe. He lays out the piece's prescriptions — massive data center buildout, nurturing the semiconductor ecosystem around ASML, and a 'middle power coalition' with countries like Korea, Japan, the UK, Australia and Canada to create leverage over frontier-model access. He describes the overwhelming reception, including a Dutch minister and a head of state who gave his staff 45 minutes to extract the key parts.
Meryem Arik (Doubleword): Open-Source Models & Sovereign Inference
Doubleword co-founder and CEO Meryem Arik explains how she predicted US export controls back in 2023 via a leverage argument and why she views the Fable 5 rug-pull's early timing as a strategic blunder that hands Europe a wake-up call. She argues sovereignty is really about leverage, that adopting open-source models is step zero (saving 4–8x on inference costs), and covers Doubleword's work with DSIT and the Sov.ai fund on energy-efficient inference on the Isambard supercomputer. She also breaks down Jevons-paradox token spend and praises AI minister Kanishka.