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Entering the Era of AI Power: An Estonian View on Europe's Way - Sten Saluveer, Telia (EP 41)

Entering the Era of AI Power: An Estonian View on Europe's Way - Sten Saluveer, Telia (EP 41)

The In-Between Tech and Trust Podcast vor 5 Tagen

0:00

36:09

️ Sten Saluveer, Growth & Innovation, Telia

What decides AI trust in Europe - the size of the model, or
whether people recognise themselves in the society using it? Sten
Saluveer helped write Estonia's digital state agenda and now
builds at Telia, and he argues Europe enters the era of AI power
holding more than it thinks: a working example, and the diversity
to invent its own category. For leaders deciding where their
organisations stand in that game, this is a view from a country
that stopped writing roadmaps and started shipping.

Episode overview

Sten and Eva move from why a builder who ran innovation at Cannes
chose an Estonian telco, to what an agent-driven state actually
looks like when more than a hundred and twenty agentic services
already run and the plan reads like scenes from a citizen's life.
They sit with the uncomfortable side: a quarter in which
Estonians lost around thirty million euros to cybercrime, and a
security goal that paradoxically aims to keep satisfaction
exactly where it is. From Cannes, Sten brings the generational
fault line - leaders over forty who see adaptation as given,
talents under thirty who experience AI as a threat to their work
and their environment - and the question of whether Europe can
turn its diversity into its own category rather than playing
everyone else's game.

Key themes

Whether a state can make itself agent-driven and keep the
citizen in control

Why holding cybersecurity satisfaction at today's level
counts as ambition

What Europe's own category could be when it stops measuring
itself in gigawatts

The generational split on AI that surfaced at Cannes, and
what it demands of leaders

Whether a telco can become the trusted digital partner of the
AI economy

About the guest

Sten Saluveer is an Estonian innovation strategist who has spent
two decades translating between the market, the technology, and
the governance layer - from heading Cannes Next at the Marché du
Film to advising the Tallinn Digital Summit. He contributed to
Estonia's digital state agenda, where he insisted the plan
contain scenarios from ordinary life, and he recently joined
Telia heading their growth and innovation initiatives. What makes
his perspective matter here is the vantage point: he argues
Europe's case from inside a small country where the agent-driven
state is already operational.

️ Chapters

[00:00] Why a builder chooses a telco when the era turns

[11:41] An action plan, not a roadmap - the state that ships

[18:11] Standing still as ambition - the cybercrime paradox

[23:15] When infrastructure has to assume it is a target

[28:03] Cannes: the generation that experiences AI as a
threat

[38:26] Reclaiming agency - Europe's own category

Links

Sten Saluveer on LinkedIn -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stensaluveer/

Eva Simone Lihotzky on LinkedIn -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalihotzky/

Telia - https://www.telia.ee/era

Estonia's digital state agenda -
https://digital-skills-jobs.europa.eu/en/initiatives/national-strategies/estonia-estonian-digital-agenda-2030

Related episode - 'Tech and Democracy with Nexus Politics'
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3WVnBsaz3LfFPwn6xsX1N6