Anna Wittenberg: “AI is for the management, for you, Mr. Areczek, it is only a market for our solutions. Germany, France, Italy or Spain can buy equipment for AI training, Poland can buy as much as US Big Brother allows. This is how we were pushed into the second league of modern technologies. It's as if we once had a steel embargo. It's terrifying that this information has been confirmed,” wrote a journalist from “Gazeta Prawna”.
Jan Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski: “This is the result of constant groveling before BigTechs, pilgrimages of ministers to Silicon Valley, the abolition of the digital tax, fairy tales that EU regulations are censorship. They see that Poles do not care about their sovereignty, so they are a “second-class” nation. This is what the elites of the Third Polish Republic did to us. ” – commented on the sanctions a technology expert and economist from the Polish Economic Network.
Piotr Sankowski: “The tone of this document is clear – yellow countries should forget about developing their own superintelligence. And the limits are supposed to be sufficient only for ordinary AI applications because “this limit ensures that American technology is available to serve foreign governments, health care providers and other local enterprises.” So, God forbid, we shouldn't think about some global AI. I regret that this entry is so negative, but I personally do not understand how in this entire geopolitical configuration we ended up in the second category of countries,” said the former director of IDEAS NCBR and an AI expert (original spelling).
Americans divided the world: Expert from artificial intelligence and Doctor of Philosophy Leszek Bukowski interprets the sanctions map as follows: “It illustrates division of the world from the perspective of the development of key technologythat the Americans have planned. Sets and training will become cheaper in the coming years – after these years we will be technologically backward and more dependent than Western EU countries“- wrote Bukowski.
He was the first to post the map: Tomasz Smolarek, who was the first to share the sanctions map on January 9, has a similar opinion to Bukowski. Smolarek signs his name as an investment advisor and posts comments on the economy and technology on the website. “If someone still thinks that AI will not be a revolution on the scale of at least the Internet (it will be much bigger), now they see what is the country that has the key technology for this revolution trying to do?so that 'leadership' does not slip away from them. However much it outrages us or makes us angry USA risk opposite to the intended one,” Smolarek wrote. Smolarek is expected to speak soon on Krzysztof Mazur's channel “Geoeconomics” as to why the American project divides the world of technology into close US allies, adversaries and something in between, and why Poland is in the last of these groups. “. Smolarek also emphasizes that Americans now have 120 days to express opinions and possibly modify or reject the act.
Will Poland use the limits? “Of course, we would all feel better if Poland was in the first group of countries, but let's not kid ourselves. Even the 50,000 The GPUs we can buy, we won't buy. I wish we had bigger ambitions, but we are unable to compete in the race to develop superintelligence” – said Dominik Batorski from the Interdisciplinary Center for Mathematical and Computer Modeling at the University of Warsaw. Bolesław Breczko, a technology journalist from “Gazeta Wyborcza” believes that it is obvious that we will not use the limits of 50,000 chips imported from the USA for three years, because today we have “maybe a thousand of them with a hook.”“.
Is Poland able to develop superintelligence? The discussion surrounding the US decision is very lively and multi-threaded. Piotr Sankowski notes in the next entry on this topic that: Without serious AI, it will be much more difficult for Poland to achieve rapid economic development in the future. However, Dominik Batorski claims that Poland is not able to compete in this race anyway, unless at the European level. In his opinion we should therefore focus on the applications of superintelligence, “because there is still a long way from technology to product.”
Startup problems: Bolesław Breczko also wonders in another thread whether the limits imposed by the US will not limit Poland's other options, even if not now, then in the future. In response, Piotr Sankowski said that The United States' decision may “have a direct impact on the valuation of AI startups. From today, an AI company located in Poland has a SAM limit.
What does the Ministry of Digitization think? The former Minister of Digital Affairs appealed to X to urgently undo the imposed sanctions PIS Janusz Cieszyński. The ministry has not yet responded to our questions on this matter.
European Union reaction: The EU issued a statement expressing concern about sanctions imposed by the USA on members of the Community. “We believe that it is also in the economic interest of the US in terms of security EU buying advanced AI chips from the US without restrictions: we cooperate closely, especially in the field of security, and we constitute an economic opportunity for the US, not a security threat,” we read. The EU has shared its concerns with the Biden administration and is waiting for constructive talks with the new US authorities, i.e. Donald Trump's team. The EU is convinced that a solution can be found that maintains the security of the transatlantic supply chain of AI and supercomputer technologies, “to the benefit of companies and citizens on both sides of the Atlantic.
About the details of the sanctions you will read in the article: “Poland in the 'second category of countries'. It's about processors. The US has put us under sanctions”
Sources: : Anna Wittenberg, Łukasz Olejnik, Piotr Sankowski, Dominik Batorski and the topic of limits, thread on X regarding the chances of developing superintelligence in Poland, Leszek Bukowski, Tomasz Smolarek, Janusz Cieszyński, Jan Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski.