Gov’t chiefs and tech leaders gather in Paris for AI summit
PARIS
Police patrol outside of the entrance to the Grand Palais, which will be the venue for an upcoming AI Action Summit, in Paris, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025.
Political and tech industry leaders descend on Paris for a two-day summit on artificial intelligence, hoping to find common ground on a technology with the potential to upset global business and society.
Co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the gathering's stated aims include "mapping" AI governance around the world, promoting the idea of more ethical, accessible and frugal AI and pushing for European sovereignty over the technology.
Political leaders, including U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, are set to rub shoulders with the likes of OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Google chief Sundar Pichai.
Two years on from the emergence of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot, able to respond to all kinds of natural-language prompts, Macron on Feb. 9 trumpeted the benefits of artificial intelligence and French efforts in the field.
In a TV interview, he trailed "109 billion euros [$113 billion] of investment in artificial intelligence in the coming years" in France.
The cash would come from the United Arab Emirates, "major American and Canadian investment funds" and French companies, Macron said.
The 109-billion-euro figure was "the equivalent for France of what the U.S. has announced with 'Stargate'," the $500-billion U.S. program led by ChatGPT maker OpenAI, he added.
The technical challenges and price of entry for nations hoping to keep abreast in the AI race have become clearer in recent weeks.
Chinese startup DeepSeek stunned Silicon Valley heavyweights with its low-cost, high-performance AI models.
In the United States, President Donald Trump lent the aura of his office to the "Stargate" project to build computing infrastructure such as data centres.
"Europe has to find a way to take a position, take some initiative and take back control," said Sylvain Duranton of the Boston Consulting Group.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen is expected to announce around 10 public supercomputers designed for use by researchers and startups while attending the summit.
Away from the investment grandstanding, a group of countries, companies and philanthropic organisations said on Feb. 9 they would pump $400 million into a partnership called "Current AI" that would foster "public interest" approaches to the technology.
Current AI aims to raise as much as $2.5 billion for its mission to grant AI developers access to more data, offer open-source tools and infrastructure for programmers to build on, and "develop systems to measure AI's social and environmental impact."
Today, political leaders from around 100 countries will hold a plenary session, with notable attendees including Modi, Vance, Zhang and Von der Leyen.
France hopes governments will agree on voluntary commitments to make AI sustainable and environmentally friendly.
But any agreement may prove elusive between blocs as diverse as the European Union, United States, China and India, each with different priorities in tech development and regulation.
