Global Leaders Clash Over AI Regulation at Paris Summit

Paris AI Summit: AI Safety Takes a Back Seat, Global Leaders Clash Over Regulation

The two-day Paris AI Action Summit, held on Feb. 10-11, 2025, has brought together leaders from nearly 100 countries to discuss the future of AI. Hot on the heels of China's disruptive DeepSeek release and U.S. President Donald Trump's vow to remove most of the guardrails from development, the summit has arrived at a highly divided time for AI technology. Instead, this summit has been seen more as an action summit. This mirrors rising views among leading tech executives and countries like the U.S., which feel a stringent focus on safety is holding back innovation in technology. The summit aims to focus on AI opportunities, such as tackling climate change and helping workers. Open-source AI technology has also been a key theme this year, with France using the success of China's DeepSeek to prove it works. On Saturday, Feb. 8, a leaked draft of the summit's declaration, which was due to be signed by attending countries, was criticized by experts concerned about safety. Talking to The Times , Professor Stuart Russell, President of the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI, took issue with the statement's failure to align with the previous summit's commitments to safety. "I can only hope this is a drafting error and that the final statement will reaffirm the need to continue addressing all the risks enumerated in previous agreements and reaffirm the urgency of doing so," he told the publication. At the same time, the U.S. has reportedly resisted the statement because it mentions the environmental cost of AI. It is currently unclear if the U.S. will sign the declaration. "The future of AI is a political issue and an issue of sovereignty and strategic dependence," French President Macron said on Sunday . AI Inequality Could Be Growing Christy Hoffman, general secretary of the UNI Global Union, warned on Monday that AI risks becoming "another engine of inequality." "Without worker representation, AI-driven productivity gains risk turning the technology into yet another engine of inequality, further straining our democracies," she said. Hoffman advocates for including workers in discussions about AI implementation, claiming that their involvement is crucial to ensuring that AI-driven productivity gains benefit all rather than concentrating power and wealth among a select few. She previously warned that without such involvement, AI could further concentrate power among a small elite. Countries Remain Divided Over AI Approach Despite global leaders meeting on the world stage, there are still many apparent differences in perspectives between countries. U.S. Vice President JD Vance is expected to continue to advocate for a hands-off approach to AI regulation, emphasizing the importance of fostering innovation pushed by President Trump. In contrast, European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, have called for more robust regulations to ensure ethical AI development. Macron highlighted the need for Europe to simplify regulations to remain competitive in the AI sector. The world's differing approaches highlight the immense challenge of establishing a unified global framework for technology. France Leads Major Investment Announcements France announced substantial investment commitments totaling approximately €110 billion ($113 billion) at the summit to bolster its AI sector. Leading contributions include €20 billion from Canadian firm Brookfield and up to €50 billion from the United Arab Emirates. These investments aim to mirror the billions of dollars being pledged in the U.S., specifically through U.S. President Donald Trump's Stargate project. Macron told reporters the new pledge was "the equivalent for France of what the United States announced with Stargate." Emmanuel Macron's Troubling Deepfakes To kick off the Summit, Macron made the strange decision to post a montage of deepfake images of himself on social media. The sinister videos depicted the President dancing to a rap song and in a disco with various 1980s hairstyles. While Macron's use of deepfakes was intended to humorously highlight AI's capabilities, it also hit on the part of the technology where concerns are growing. Concerns surrounding deepfakes include their ability to spread false information and mislead the public. Without a focus on safety at this year's summit, it appears worries about the future of deepfakes have been swept under the rug.

Paris AI summit draws world leaders and CEOs eager for technology wave

Eagerness to regulate AI has decreased since the UK and South Korea summits, which focused on the risks after ChatGPT's 2022 launch. As US President Trump removes AI safeguards to boost competitiveness, pressure on the EU grows to adopt a lighter regulatory approach, ensuring European firms remain competitive in the tech race.World leaders and technology executives are convening in Paris on Monday to discuss how to safely embrace artificial intelligence at a time of mounting resistance to red tape that businesses say stifles innovation. Eagerness to rein in AI has waned since previous summits in Britain and South Korea that focused world powers' attention on technology's risks after ChatGPT's viral launch in 2022. As US President Donald Trump tears up his predecessor's AI guardrails to promote US competitiveness, pressure has built on the European Union to pursue a lighter-touch approach to AI to help keep European firms in the tech race. "If we want growth, jobs and progress, we must allow innovators to innovate, builders to build and developers to develop," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an op-ed in Le Monde ahead of the summit. Some EU leaders including the summit's host, French President Emmanuel Macron, are hoping flexibility will be applied to the bloc's new AI Act to help homegrown startups. "There's a risk some decide to have no rules and that's dangerous. But there's also the opposite risk, if Europe gives itself too many rules," Macron told regional French newspapers. "We should not be afraid of innovation," he said. Trump's early moves on AI underscored how far the strategies to regulate AI in the United States, China and EU have diverged. European lawmakers last year approved the bloc's AI Act, the world's first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology. Tech giants and some capitals are pushing for it to be enforced leniently. Moreover, Trump's brakes-off approach has emboldened the regulation-cautious US Big Tech groups from which Europe needs to seek investment. Meanwhile, China's DeepSeek challenged US and British AI leadership last month by freely distributing a human-like reasoning system, galvanizing geopolitical and industry rivals to race faster still. Trump is not sending US AI Safety Institute staff to the Paris summit, in a troubling sign to those hoping for global risk-based rules governing AI. Energy needs Top political leaders including US Vice President JD Vance and China's Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing will attend the summit. Others on the attendance list include Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Macron is due to meet with Zhang on Monday and Vance on Tuesday, the Elysee said. The plenary session is on February 11. Top executives such as Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI's Altman are slated to give talks as well. Delegations are also expected to talk about managing AI's massive energy needs as the planet gets hotter, and AI for the developing world. A non-binding statement is being discussed. Ahead of the summit, France struck a deal with the United Arab Emirates for a major AI data centre representing investments of up to $50 billion. At the weekend, Nvidia-backed French startup Mistral announced the opening of a data centre in the wider Paris region. Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral, which launched a new app with generative AI software last week, told Reuters: "The French and the whole world are realising that European players count and that they provide cutting-edge technology." Not everyone in Paris agreed with looking beyond AI's dangers. Yoshua Bengio, considered one of the "Godfathers of AI," said at an event on the sidelines Sunday that frontier AI already had shown a capacity for deception and self-preservation, in a harbinger of future risks. "I'm speaking my mind to anyone who wants to hear it," said Bengio. "I'm not going to stop."

World leaders seek elusive AI common ground at Paris summit

World leaders were set to hold formal talks in Paris on Tuesday on artificial intelligence (AI), seeking elusive common ground on a technology subject to a global race for promised economic benefits. Hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the gathering comes hours after Elon Musk reportedly put in a bid for star developer OpenAI, underscoring AI's potential to gather power into a single pair of hands. Attempts to reach global agreement may also frustrate major powers such as the United States and China, which have their own geopolitical tech priorities. Media reports suggest that neither Britain nor the US -- two leading countries for AI development -- will sign a planned joint declaration as it stands. "Good AI governance" requires "clear rules that foster the acceptance of AI technologies", German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was to tell counterparts, according to a draft of his speech seen by AFP. Tech and political leaders will give speeches in a plenary session starting at 10:00 am (0900 GMT). Among them will be US Vice President JD Vance, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. Outside observers criticized an alleged leaked draft of the joint statement for failing to mention AI's suspected threat to humanity's future as a species. The supposed draft "fails to even mention these risks" said Max Tegmark, head of the US-based Future of Life Institute, which has warned of AI's "existential risk". 'Plug, baby, plug!' In recent weeks, the United States' $500 billion "Stargate" program led by ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and the emergence of the high-performing, low-cost Chinese start-up DeepSeek, have brought into focus the technical challenges and price of entry for nations hoping to keep abreast of AI developments. Meanwhile, the Musk-led $97.4-billion bid for OpenAI reported by the Wall Street Journal would compound the tech influence of the world's richest man, already boss of X, Tesla, SpaceX and his own AI developer xAI as well as a confidant of US President Donald Trump. Sam Altman, the OpenAI chief set to speak in Paris later Tuesday, responded to the reported offer with a dry "no thank you" on X. For France, Macron vowed Monday to blast through red tape to build AI infrastructure in his bid to keep Europe competitive. "We will adopt the Notre Dame de Paris strategy" of streamlined procedures that saw France rebuild the landmark cathedral within five years of its devastation in a 2019 fire, he said. Macron's push to highlight French competitiveness saw him repeatedly trumpet 109 billion euros ($113 billion) to be invested in French AI in the coming years. He has also hailed France's extensive fleet of nuclear plants as a key advantage providing clean, scalable energy supply for AI's vast processing needs. "I have a good friend in the other part of the ocean saying 'drill, baby, drill'," Macron said in a reference to Trump's pro-fossil fuels policy. "Here there is no need to drill, it's plug, baby, plug!" he said. EU Commission chief von der Leyen is expected to make further announcements on the bloc's competitiveness on Tuesday. "It's important for Europe to choose a third path on AI" that is "more ethical and responsible" than in the US or China, Maya Noel, head of startup association France Digitale, told broadcaster Radio Classique on Monday. Gender pay gap Away from the political pageantry, OpenAI's Altman was to address business leaders later Tuesday at the Station F tech campus in southeast Paris, founded by French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel. Altman mused in a blog post Monday that with ever more powerful AI systems on the horizon, "it does seem like the balance of power between capital and labor could easily get messed up" in the near future. On Monday, high-profile summit attendees had warned against squandering the technology's economic promise in the shorter term. World Trade Organization chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said "near universal adoption of AI... could increase trade by up to 14 percentage points" from its current trend. But global "fragmentation" of regulations on the technology and data flows could see both trade and output contract, she said. In the workplace, AI is mostly replacing humans in clerical jobs disproportionately held by women, International Labor Organization head Gilbert Houngbo said. That risks widening the gender pay gap even though more jobs are being created than destroyed by AI on current evidence, he added.

World leaders seek elusive AI common ground at Paris summit

Paris (AFP) - World leaders were set to hold formal talks in Paris on Tuesday on artificial intelligence (AI), seeking elusive common ground on a technology subject to a global race for promised economic benefits. Hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the gathering comes hours after Elon Musk reportedly put in a bid for star developer OpenAI, underscoring AI's potential to gather power into a single pair of hands. Attempts to reach global agreement may also frustrate major powers such as the United States and China, which have their own geopolitical tech priorities. Media reports suggest that neither Britain nor the US -- two leading countries for AI development -- will sign a planned joint declaration as it stands. "Good AI governance" requires "clear rules that foster the acceptance of AI technologies", German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was to tell counterparts, according to a draft of his speech seen by AFP. Tech and political leaders are expected to arrive at the opulent Grand Palais from 8:45 am (0745 GMT) before the plenary session begins at 10:00 am. Among them will be US Vice President JD Vance, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. Outside observers criticised an alleged leaked draft of the joint statement for failing to mention AI's suspected threat to humanity's future as a species. The supposed draft "fails to even mention these risks" said Max Tegmark, head of the US-based Future of Life Institute, which has warned of AI's "existential risk". 'Plug, baby, plug!' In recent weeks, the United States' $500 billion "Stargate" programme led by ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and the emergence of the high-performing, low-cost Chinese start-up DeepSeek, have brought into focus the technical challenges and price of entry for nations hoping to keep abreast on AI. Meanwhile, the Musk-led $97.4-billion bid for OpenAI reported by the Wall Street Journal would compound the tech influence of the world's richest man, already boss of X, Tesla, SpaceX and his own AI developer xAI as well as a confidant of US President Donald Trump. Sam Altman, the OpenAI chief set to speak in Paris later Tuesday, responded to the reported offer with a dry "no thank you" on X. For France, Macron vowed Monday to blast through red tape to build AI infrastructure in his bid to keep Europe competitive. "We will adopt the Notre Dame de Paris strategy" of streamlined procedures that saw France rebuild the landmark cathedral within five years of its devastation in a 2019 fire, he said. Macron's push to highlight French competitiveness saw him repeatedly trumpet 109 billion euros ($113 billion) to be invested in French AI in the coming years. He has also hailed France's extensive fleet of nuclear plants as a key advantage providing clean, scalable energy supply for AI's vast processing needs. "I have a good friend in the other part of the ocean saying 'drill, baby, drill'," Macron said in a reference to Trump's pro-fossil fuels policy. "Here there is no need to drill, it's plug, baby, plug!" he said. EU Commission chief von der Leyen is expected to make further announcements on the bloc's competitiveness on Tuesday. Gender pay gap Away from the political pageantry, OpenAI's Altman was to address business leaders later Tuesday at the Station F tech campus in southeast Paris, founded by French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel. Altman mused in a blog post Monday that with ever more powerful AI systems on the horizon, "it does seem like the balance of power between capital and labour could easily get messed up" in the near future. On Monday, high-profile summit attendees had warned against squandering the technology's economic promise in the shorter term. World Trade Organization chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said "near universal adoption of AI... could increase trade by up to 14 percentage points" from its current trend. But global "fragmentation" of regulations on the technology and data flows could see both trade and output contract, she said. In the workplace, AI is mostly replacing humans in clerical jobs disproportionately held by women, International Labour Organization head Gilbert Houngbo said. That risks widening the gender pay gap even though more jobs are being created than destroyed by AI on current evidence, he added.

World leaders seek elusive AI common ground at Paris summit

Attempts to reach global agreement may also frustrate major powers such as the United States and China, which have their own geopolitical tech priorities. Media reports suggest that neither Britain nor the US -- two leading countries for AI development -- will sign a planned joint declaration as it stands.World leaders were set to hold formal talks in Paris on Tuesday on artificial intelligence (AI), seeking elusive common ground on a technology subject to a global race for promised economic benefits. Hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the gathering comes hours after Elon Musk reportedly put in a bid for star developer OpenAI, underscoring AI's potential to gather power into a single pair of hands. Attempts to reach global agreement may also frustrate major powers such as the United States and China, which have their own geopolitical tech priorities. Media reports suggest that neither Britain nor the US -- two leading countries for AI development -- will sign a planned joint declaration as it stands. "Good AI governance" requires "clear rules that foster the acceptance of AI technologies", German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was to tell counterparts, according to a draft of his speech seen by AFP. Tech and political leaders are expected to arrive at the opulent Grand Palais from 8:45 am (0745 GMT) before the plenary session begins at 10:00 am. Among them will be US Vice President JD Vance, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. Outside observers criticised an alleged leaked draft of the joint statement for failing to mention AI's suspected threat to humanity's future as a species. The supposed draft "fails to even mention these risks" said Max Tegmark, head of the US-based Future of Life Institute, which has warned of AI's "existential risk". Plug, baby, plug! In recent weeks, the United States' $500 billion "Stargate" programme led by ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and the emergence of the high-performing, low-cost Chinese start-up DeepSeek, have brought into focus the technical challenges and price of entry for nations hoping to keep abreast on AI. Meanwhile, the Musk-led $97.4-billion bid for OpenAI reported by the Wall Street Journal would compound the tech influence of the world's richest man, already boss of X, Tesla, SpaceX and his own AI developer xAI as well as a confidant of US President Donald Trump. Sam Altman, the OpenAI chief set to speak in Paris later Tuesday, responded to the reported offer with a dry "no thank you" on X. For France, Macron vowed Monday to blast through red tape to build AI infrastructure in his bid to keep Europe competitive. "We will adopt the Notre Dame de Paris strategy" of streamlined procedures that saw France rebuild the landmark cathedral within five years of its devastation in a 2019 fire, he said. Macron's push to highlight French competitiveness saw him repeatedly trumpet 109 billion euros ($113 billion) to be invested in French AI in the coming years. He has also hailed France's extensive fleet of nuclear plants as a key advantage providing clean, scalable energy supply for AI's vast processing needs. "I have a good friend in the other part of the ocean saying 'drill, baby, drill'," Macron said in a reference to Trump's pro-fossil fuels policy. "Here there is no need to drill, it's plug, baby, plug!" he said. EU Commission chief von der Leyen is expected to make further announcements on the bloc's competitiveness on Tuesday. Gender pay gap Away from the political pageantry, OpenAI's Altman was to address business leaders later Tuesday at the Station F tech campus in southeast Paris, founded by French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel. Altman mused in a blog post Monday that with ever more powerful AI systems on the horizon, "it does seem like the balance of power between capital and labour could easily get messed up" in the near future. On Monday, high-profile summit attendees had warned against squandering the technology's economic promise in the shorter term. World Trade Organization chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said "near universal adoption of AI... could increase trade by up to 14 percentage points" from its current trend. But global "fragmentation" of regulations on the technology and data flows could see both trade and output contract, she said. In the workplace, AI is mostly replacing humans in clerical jobs disproportionately held by women, International Labour Organization head Gilbert Houngbo said. That risks widening the gender pay gap even though more jobs are being created than destroyed by AI on current evidence, he added.

Paris AI summit pits innovation ambitions against job loss fears

France hopes that world leaders and tech executives at an artificial intelligence summit in Paris will agree the AI revolution should be inclusive and sustainable, although it was unclear on Monday whether the United States would be supportive. Eagerness to rein in AI has waned since previous summits in Britain and South Korea that focused world powers' attention on the technology's risks after ChatGPT's viral launch in 2022. As US President Donald Trump has torn up his predecessor's AI guardrails to promote US competitiveness, pressure has built on the European Union to pursue a lighter-touch approach to AI to help keep European companies in the tech race. A January 30 version of the non-binding draft statement on AI stewardship, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, called for an "inclusive approach" to AI that is multi-stakeholder, human rights-based and bolsters the developing world. The draft statement laid out priorities that included "avoiding market concentration" and "making AI sustainable for people and the planet." US Vice President JD Vance could spell out the United States' views when he gives a speech at the summit on Tuesday. Trump's early moves on AI have underscored how far the strategies to regulate AI in the United States, China and EU have diverged. And many at the two-day summit that started on Monday pushed the EU to soften its own rulebook. "If we want growth, jobs and progress, we must allow innovators to innovate, builders to build and developers to develop," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an op-ed in Le Monde newspaper. Even the summit's host, French President Emmanuel Macron said: "There's a risk some decide to have no rules and that's dangerous. But there's also the opposite risk, if Europe gives itself too many rules." "We should not be afraid of innovation," Macron told regional French newspapers. European lawmakers last year approved the bloc's AI Act, the world's first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology. China's DeepSeek challenged the United States' AI leadership last month by freely distributing a human-like reasoning system, galvanizing geopolitical and industry rivals to race faster still. More investment Meanwhile, one early outcome from the summit was the launch of Current AI, a partnership of countries such as France and Germany and industry players including Google and Salesforce. With an initial $400 million in investment, the partnership will spearhead public-interest projects such as making high-quality data for AI available and investing in open-source tools. It is aiming for up to $2.5 billion in capital over five years. Current AI founder Martin Tisne told Reuters a public-interest focus was necessary to avoid AI having downsides like social media has had. "We have to have learned the lessons," he said. Separately, France will announce private sector investments totaling some 109 billion euros ($113 billion) during the summit, Macron said on Sunday. "The size of this 100 billion euro investment reassured us, in a way, that there's going to be ambitious enough projects in France," said Clem Delangue, the CEO of Hugging Face, a US company with French cofounders that is a hub for open-source AI online. Risks Not everyone in Paris agreed with taking a lighter-touch approach to AI regulation. "What I worry about is that... there will be pressures from the US and elsewhere to weaken the EU's AI Act and weaken those existing protections," said Brian Chen, policy director at Data & Society, a US-based nonprofit. Labour leaders expressed concerns on the impact of AI on workers, including what happens to workers whose jobs are taken over by AI and are pushed into new jobs. "There is a risk of those jobs being much less paid and sometimes with much less protection," said Gilbert F. Houngbo, director-general of the International Labour Organization. Top political leaders including China's Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing are also attending the summit, as well as top executives such as Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI's Altman.

Paris AI summit draws world leaders and CEOs eager for technology wave

PARIS (Reuters) - World leaders and technology executives are convening in Paris on Monday to discuss how to safely embrace artificial intelligence at a time of mounting resistance to heavy-handed red tape that businesses say stifles innovation. Eagerness to rein in AI has waned since previous AI summits in Britain and South Korea that focused world powers' attention on technology's risks after ChatGPT's viral launch in 2022. As U.S. President Donald Trump tears up his predecessor's AI guardrails to promote U.S. competitiveness, pressure has built on EU policymakers to pursue a lighter-touch approach to AI to help keep European firms in the tech race. Some EU leaders, including summit host French President Emmanuel Macron, and tech companies are hoping flexibility will be applied to the bloc's new AI Act to help homegrown startups. "There's a risk some decide to have no rules and that's dangerous. But there's also the opposite risk, if Europe gives itself too many rules," Macron told regional French newspapers in an interview published on Friday. "We should not be afraid of innovation," he said. Trump's early moves on AI underscored how far the strategies to regulate AI in the United States, China and EU have diverged. European lawmakers last year approved the bloc's AI Act, the world's first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology. Tech giants and some capitals are pushing for it to be enforced leniently. Brussels is finalising an accompanying code of practice. Moreover, Trump's brakes-off approach has emboldened the regulation-cautious U.S. Big Tech groups from which Europe needs to seek investment, said British think-tank Chatham House. Meanwhile, China's DeepSeek challenged U.S. and British AI leadership last month by freely distributing a human-like reasoning system, galvanizing geopolitical and industry rivals to race faster still. "An unpredictable global scramble to develop AI is underway, as the U.S. turns inward and China boasts new capabilities," Chatham House said. Trump is not sending the U.S. AI Safety Institute to Paris, in a troubling sign to those hoping for global risk-based rules governing AI. COMPETITIVENESS Top political leaders including U.S. Vice President JD Vance and China's Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing will attend the summit. Others on the attendance list are Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Macron is due to meet with Guoqing on Monday and Vance on Tuesday, the Elysee said. The plenary session is on February 11. Top executives such as Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are slated to give talks as well. Executives will partake in an invitation-only dinner with political leaders on Monday. Google Senior Vice President James Manyika said at a press reception on Sunday that the opportunities from AI were now in "much greater focus." Delegations are also expected to discuss how to manage AI's massive energy needs as the planet gets hotter, as well as AI for the developing world. A non-binding communiqué has been in progress. Macron is eager to promote France's national industry, with a focus on areas where Europe's second-largest economy has an advantage: free, "open-source" systems, and clean energy to power data centers. Ahead of the summit, France struck a deal with the United Arab Emirates for a major AI data center representing investments of up to $50 billion. Launching a new app with generative AI software, the CEO of Nvidia-backed French startup Mistral told Reuters: "The French and the whole world are realising that European players count and that they provide cutting-edge technology." (Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin, Florence Loeve and Elizabeth Pineau in Paris; additional reporting by Michel Rose; editing by Richard Lough and Clelia Oziel)

Paris AI summit: Regulation, innovation and US dominance all on the agenda

Heads of state and tech bosses are gathering, with some trying to break US and Chinese dominance in artificial intelligence. Top government officials and scientists from around 100 countries are gathering in Paris for the AI Action Summit, which will discuss the future of artificial intelligence. Co-hosted by India's Narendra Modi, the summit's guests also include US vice president JD Vance, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and China's deputy leader Zhang Guoqing. It's Mr Vance's first overseas trip in his new position, but many of the summit's attendees, including Mr Modi, are hoping to break his country's dominance in artificial intelligence. The ten biggest AI companies in the world are based in the US including Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Oracle, Meta and Alphabet. A fortnight ago, Chinese company DeepSeek also threw the industry into chaos when it revealed an AI model more powerful than ChatGPT and made for a fraction of the cost, showing just how powerful China could be in the industry. Mr Modi has said he intends to bring a wider range of people into AI development and prevent the sector from becoming a US-China battle. His foreign secretary Vikram Misri also stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid "perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world". Analysis: Paris summit shows dangers of AI race Innovation, regulation and the challenges of embracing AI However, breaking US dominance may be easier said than done, especially for countries with stricter AI regulation. President Trump has already torn up rules imposed by Joe Biden, saying they "hinder[ed] AI innovation and impose[d] onerous and unnecessary government control over the development of AI". That's a sentiment echoed by big tech bosses. "If we want growth, jobs and progress, we must allow innovators to innovate, builders to build and developers to develop," Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, wrote in Le Monde ahead of the summit. "There's a lot of complicated questions to resolve" around issues like the ability to control AI systems, said Sir Demis Hassabis, founder of Google DeepMind, at the summit. "But also I think even more complicated are maybe the geopolitical questions about things like regulation." Companies in EU countries, for example, may find it harder to innovate than those in the US or China after the EU introduced the AI Safety Bill last year, which imposes strict restrictions on how AI can be used in the region. The UK also has guidelines around how AI can be used, but in January, Sir Keir Starmer promised to "mainline AI into the veins" of the country, saying AI could bring £47bn to the economy every year. As well as politicians, the tech world's elite are in the French capital, with Mr Altman, Microsoft president Brad Smith and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai among the big names attending. What keeps AI experts awake at night Yoshua Bengio, known as one of the "godfathers of AI", will also speak at the event. The scientist recently said he is "kept awake at night" by the fear that humans may build systems "smarter than us that we don't know how to control". Protecting people from unregulated AI is one of the topics up for discussion at the conference but a leaked draft of the document that will be signed by attending countries tomorrow doesn't appear to mention mitigating AI's risks. Read more: UK to 'lose AI leadership' without data strategy How to protect your privacy from AI One attendee, MIT professor Max Tegmark who is the president of the Future of Life Institute, urged countries not to sign the document. "To reap unimaginable benefits without endangering millions of livelihoods and lives, AI needs binding safety standards - like we have for every other industry," he said in a statement to Sky News. "This is supported by history, science, public opinion and common-sense. This critical moment calls for courageous leaders who take action - not ones who bury their heads in the sand to appease Big Tech.

World leaders and tech giants converge in Paris for AI summit

The Paris summit, which will be attended by companies such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, aims to reach a consensus on guiding the development of artificial intelligence. Global leaders, technology industry executives and scientists are meeting in Paris for a two-day summit to discuss artificial intelligence's impact on global security, economics and governance. The summit, which is being co-hosted by French Presiden Emmanuel Macron and and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, takes place as tech giants vie for supremacy in the rapidly evolving sector and while China's release of DeepSeek last month showed the country's ability to rival major Western players like ChatGPT. Heads of state, top government officials, CEOs, and scientists from around 100 countries are participating in the summit, which that started on Monday. Prominent attendees include European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US Vice President JD Vance. Vance, who is on his first overseas trip since taking office, arrived along with his wife and three children and was greeted in France on Monday morning by Manuel Valls, the minister for Overseas France, and the US Embassy's charge d'affaires, David McCawley. The summit is expected to give some European leaders a chance to meet Vance for the first time. Earlier, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing was welcomed at the Elysee Palace. Macron set the tone for the summit on Sunday in an interview on national television France 2. "We're living in a technology and scientific revolution we've rarely seen." France and Europe must seize the opportunity, he said, because AI "will enable us to live better, learn better, and care better, and it's up to us to put this artificial intelligence at the service of human beings." The Paris summit, whose attendeed include big names like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, aims to speed up AI progress in areas like culture, health, and the environment. The event will be used as the platform to launch a "public interest" partnership called "Current AI" with an initial €387 ($400) million investment. The initiative aims to raise $2.5 billion over the next five years and will involve governments, businesses and philanthropic groups that will provide open-source access to databases, software and other tools for "trusted" AI actors, according to Macron's office. Europe vies for space in AI supremacy As tech titans fight for dominance in the fast-moving technology industry, France's summit organisers also want big investment decisions to come from Europe. They want to make the region a serious competitor in an industry that is becoming increasingly shaped by the growing competition between the US and China. "Europe is going to accelerate; France is going to accelerate - and so for us, France, we're announcing tomorrow at this summit €109 billion of investment in artificial intelligence over the next few years," Macron said on Sunday. The French leader explained that AI will take over the heaviest, most repetitive tasks in healthcare systems and support professions, freeing up caregivers to supervise robots and be present in a human way. This shift will create space to improve the quality of care, he added. Meanwhile, in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun expressed opposition on Monday to any moves to restrict access to AI tools, especially after the release of DeepSeek prompted calls in the US Congress to limit its use for security reasons. "We oppose drawing ideological lines and oppose overstretching national security concepts and politicizing economic and trade issues," Guo said. He claimed that China advocates for open-source AI technology and promotes the accessibility of AI services to share the benefits of artificial intelligence with all countries. For his part, US President Donald Trump has emphasised his desire to make the US the "world capital of artificial intelligence" by tapping its oil and gas reserves to feed the energy-hungry technology. The rise of DeepSeek has been seen by tech analysts and observers as a change in the AI ecosystem, especially in light of the US-China competition.

U.S. Pushes for Less AI Regulation at Paris Summit

Safety concerns are out, optimism is in: that was the takeaway from a major artificial intelligence summit in Paris this week, as leaders from the U.S., France, and beyond threw their weight behind the AI industry. Although there were divisions between major nations -- the U.S. and the U.K. did not sign a final statement endorsed by 60 nations calling for an "inclusive" and "open" AI sector -- the focus of the two-day meeting was markedly different from the last such gathering. Last year, in Seoul, the emphasis was on defining red-lines for the AI industry. The concern: that the technology, although holding great promise, also had the potential for great harm. But that was then. The final statement made no mention of significant AI risks nor attempts to mitigate them, while in a speech on Tuesday, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance said: "I'm not here this morning to talk about AI safety, which was the title of the conference a couple of years ago. I'm here to talk about AI opportunity." The French leader and summit host, Emmanuel Macron, also trumpeted a decidedly pro-business message -- underlining just how eager nations around the world are to gain an edge in the development of new AI systems. The emphasis on boosting the AI sector and putting aside safety concerns was a far cry from the first ever global summit on AI held at Bletchley Park in the U.K. in 2023. Called the "AI Safety Summit" -- the French meeting in contrast was called the "AI Action Summit" -- its express goal was to thrash out a way to mitigate the risks posed by developments in the technology. The second global gathering, in Seoul in 2024, built on this foundation, with leaders securing voluntary safety commitments from leading AI players such as OpenAI, Google, Meta, and their counterparts in China, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. The 2025 summit in Paris, governments and AI companies agreed at the time, would be the place to define red-lines for AI: risk thresholds that would require mitigations at the international level. Paris, however, went the other way. "I think this was a real belly-flop," says Max Tegmark, an MIT professor and the president of the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit focused on mitigating AI risks. "It almost felt like they were trying to undo Bletchley." Anthropic, an AI company focused on safety, called the event a "missed opportunity." The U.K., which hosted the first AI summit, said it had declined to sign the Paris declaration because of a lack of substance. "We felt the declaration didn't provide enough practical clarity on global governance, nor sufficiently address harder questions around national security and the challenge AI poses to it," said a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The shift comes against the backdrop of intensifying developments in AI. In the month or so before the 2025 Summit, OpenAI released an "agent" model that can perform research tasks at roughly the level of a competent graduate student. Safety researchers, meanwhile, showed for the first time that the latest generation of AI models can try to deceive their creators, and copy themselves, in an attempt to avoid modification. Many independent AI scientists now agree with the projections of the tech companies themselves: that super-human level AI may be developed within the next five years -- with potentially catastrophic effects if unsolved questions in safety research aren't addressed. Yet such worries were pushed to the back burner as the U.S., in particular, made a forceful argument against moves to regulate the sector, with Vance saying that the Trump Administration "cannot and will not" accept foreign governments "tightening the screws on U.S. tech companies." He also strongly criticized European regulations. The E.U. has the world's most comprehensive AI law, called the AI Act, plus other laws such as the Digital Services Act, which Vance called out by name as being overly restrictive in its restrictions related to misinformation on social media. The new Vice President, who has a broad base of support among venture capitalists, also made clear that his political support for big tech companies did not extend to regulations that would raise barriers for new startups, thus hindering the development of innovative AI technologies. "To restrict [AI's] development now would not only unfairly benefit incumbents in the space, it would mean paralysing one of the most promising technologies we have seen in generations," Vance said. "When a massive incumbent comes to us asking for safety regulations, we ought to ask whether that safety regulation is for the benefit of our people, or whether it's for the benefit of the incumbent." And in a clear sign that concerns about AI risks are out of favor in President Trump's Washington, he associated AI safety with a popular Republican talking point: the restriction of "free speech" by social media platforms trying to tackle harms like misinformation.

Paris AI summit shows rift between regulation and innovation

The AI Action Summit is arguably a coming together of the most powerful people in the world. Sure, political representatives from all our major economies are convening here in Paris. But in the age of artificial intelligence, it's the big tech companies who own the powerful AI models, as well as the hardware and expertise to design and build them, that also wield true power. In late 2023, the UK government convened the first international AI summit at Bletchley Park near London. Its focus was supposedly on AI safety and how governments could ensure their citizens' jobs, or even lives, weren't threatened by the rapid rise of superintelligent AI that tech bosses assured them was just around the corner. But the undercurrent was very much political leaders trying to figure out how to capitalise on the advantages AI will undoubtedly bring. Things are different now. Donald Trump has vowed to make the US the world's AI superpower. Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, however, a Chinese company, DeepSeek, proved that it could rival American "big tech" despite strict controls on leading AI hardware. It's no accident that China, which remained on the sidelines of previous summits, has sent vice premier Zhang Guoqing - seen as President Xi Jinping's right-hand man. JD Vance is also making his first overseas trip as US vice president in order to attend the summit. French President Emmanuel Macron is keen to steer the conversation away from the risks of a race towards computer superintelligence and towards how AI tools can be used for things societies need, such as curing disease and improving public services. Read more from Sky News: Trump to impose tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports Labour MP 'deeply regrets' WhatsApp comments More than 600 immigration arrests in January The big tech firms want to talk about that too, and how Mr Trump's plans for the lightest-touch regulation are the only way to ensure the AI innovation that governments want. Mr Macron wants leaders to commit to a political declaration around ethical, democratic and environmental principles when it comes to AI. But a leaked draft of the text makes little mention of safety. That is at odds with the EU's tougher regulatory stance on AI - and the views of many AI experts on the sidelines of this summit. They continue to warn of the dangers of a big tech oligopoly on AI. They also warn of the risks of their role, deliberate or not, in a geopolitical race for AI supremacy that leaders like Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are likely to pursue.

Government chiefs and tech leaders gather in Paris for AI summit

Political and tech industry leaders were set to descend on Paris Monday 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. Monday's meeting of around 1,500 guests in the French capital's opulent Grand Palais will feature lectures and panel discussions outlining the promises of and challenges posed by AI, from around 9:30 am (0830 GMT). Political leaders, including US 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 Sunday trumpeted the benefits of artificial intelligence and French efforts in the field. 'Stargate' sets the pace 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. Sunday's 109-billion-euro figure was "the equivalent for France of what the US has announced with 'Stargate'," the $500-billion US 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 centers. These vast buildings concentrate in one place the data storage and processing power needed to develop and run the most advanced AI models. "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. Global governance puzzle Away from the investment grandstanding, a group of countries, companies and philanthropic organizations said Sunday 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". "We've seen the harms of unchecked tech development and the transformative potential it holds when aligned with the public interest," Current AI founder Martin Tisne said. On Tuesday, 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.

Tech titans and government chiefs gather in Paris for landmark AI summit

Political and tech leaders convene in Paris for a summit co-hosted by French President Macron and Indian PM Modi to discuss AI governance, aiming for ethical, accessible AI and bolstering European sovereignty over the technology. The event, at Grand Palais, includes lectures and panels on AI's potential impacts. Political and tech industry leaders were set to descend on Paris Monday 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. Monday's meeting of around 1,500 guests in the French capital's opulent Grand Palais will feature lectures and panel discussions outlining the promises of and challenges posed by AI, from around 9:30 am (0830 GMT). Political leaders, including US 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 Sunday 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. Sunday's 109-billion-euro figure was "the equivalent for France of what the US has announced with 'Stargate'," the $500-billion US programme 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. These vast buildings concentrate in one place the data storage and processing power needed to develop and run the most advanced AI models. "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. Read moreFrench President Emmanuel Macron announces €100 billion investments in AI Global governance puzzle Away from the investment grandstanding, a group of countries, companies and philanthropic organisations said Sunday 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". "We've seen the harms of unchecked tech development and the transformative potential it holds when aligned with the public interest," Current AI founder Martin Tisne said. On Tuesday, 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.

Trump, DeepSeek in focus as nations gather at Paris AI Summit

PARIS (Reuters) - All eyes are on the French capital next week to see if U.S. President Donald Trump's administration can find common ground with China and nearly 100 other nations on the safe development of artificial intelligence. About a year after world powers reckoned with the dangers of AI in England's Bletchley Park, a wider array of countries are gathering in Paris to discuss putting the technology to work. France, eager to promote its national industry, is hosting the AI Action Summit alongside India on Feb. 10 and 11, with a focus on areas where Europe's second-largest economy has an advantage: freely available or "open-source" systems, and clean energy to power data centers. Mitigating labor disruption and promoting sovereignty in a global AI market are also on the agenda. Top executives from Alphabet, Microsoft and dozens of other businesses are slated to attend. Government leaders are expected to dine on Monday with select CEOs. And talks will include one on Tuesday by Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, two people involved in the summit told Reuters. It was less clear whether the U.S. will reach consensus with other nations on AI. Since taking office on Jan. 20, President Trump has revoked former President Joe Biden's 2023 executive order on the technology, set in motion a repeat withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and faced Congressional calls to consider new export controls on AI chips to counter rival China. U.S. Vice President JD Vance will attend for the American delegation. A non-binding communiqué of principles for the stewardship of AI, bearing U.S., Chinese and other signatures, has been under negotiation and would mark a big achievement if reached, said the people involved in the summit, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They declined to detail the communiqué or elaborate if there were any points of disagreement among the would-be signatories. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. An official for the French presidency said the summit will give voice to countries around the world, not only the U.S. and China. "We are showing that AI is here, that companies must adopt it, that it is a vector of competitiveness for France and for Europe," the Élysée official said. NO NEW AI REGULATION Safety commitments dominated the conversation in prior global AI summits in Bletchley Park and Seoul. In Paris, creating new regulation is not on the agenda. Reeling from red tape and a reputation for risk aversion, Europe and particularly France are eager to discuss frameworks for AI policy but not rules that could slow down their national champions, which have lagged American companies. Countries like France are evaluating how to implement the EU AI Act in as flexible a way as possible so it does not discourage innovation, the people involved in the summit said. Instead in focus is how to distribute AI's benefits to developing nations, via cheaper models made by the likes of France's startup Mistral and China's DeepSeek. The Hangzhou-based company rocked global markets last month by showing it could vie with U.S. heavyweights on human-like reasoning technology, while charging much less. France has seized on the development as evidence that the global race to more powerful AI remains wide open. One of the summit's likely outcomes is that philanthropies and businesses are expected to commit an initial $500 million in capital, going up to $2.5 billion over five years, to fund public-interest projects on AI around the world, the people said. Another is addressing the energy crunch that industry thinks is inevitable from their power-hungry AI models. A major producer of clean energy in the form of nuclear power, France wants to reconcile the world's climate and AI ambitions. France's decarbonized energy and "nuclear fleet, in the context of data center installations, is an asset," the Élysée official said. "We will most likely have announcements in this regard at the summit." (Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin and Elizabeth Pineau; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose and Anna Tong; Editing by David Gregorio)

Europe looks to embrace AI at Paris summit's 2nd day while global consensus unclear

(Reuters) - World leaders gathered on Tuesday for the second day and plenary session of the Paris summit on artificial intelligence, as U.S. willingness to sign onto a statement championing sustainable AI remained in question. Hours after President Emmanuel Macron declared France was in the AI race and Europe was eager for business, representatives of nearly 100 countries including China, India and the U.S. prepared to meet and determine if competing national interests could be reconciled. U.S. Vice President JD Vance is leading the American delegation. Macron highlighted one difference on Monday night. When it comes to electricity, France would not adopt a "drill, baby, drill" approach, like U.S. oil production policy, but instead tap its clean power so companies could "plug, baby, plug" to meet AI's voracious power needs, he said. One topic of political alignment, however, was that 2025 was not the year to regulate AI anew. U.S. President Donald Trump has torn up his predecessor Joe Biden's AI guardrails and Europe has taken note. According to Macron, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will announce on Tuesday a new AI strategy for the bloc that "will be a unique opportunity for Europe to accelerate, to simplify our regulations, to deepen the single market and to invest as well in computing capacities." German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had this message for guests at an AI summit dinner on Monday: "I urge European companies to join forces for a strong joint effort towards AI made in Europe," he said in prepared remarks seen by Reuters. Executives were to gather for the event's Business Day, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was expected to address the summit. A consortium led by Elon Musk said on Monday it had offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit controlling OpenAI. It was unclear if the U.S. and other nations would embrace a draft summit statement circulated on January 30 that called for an "inclusive approach" to AI that is multi-stakeholder, human rights-based and bolsters the developing world. The draft declaration, seen by Reuters, laid out priorities that included "avoiding market concentration" and "making AI sustainable for people and the planet." Vance's first international trip as U.S. vice president could still take a different focus. Vance told Breitbart News he would use the occasion to discuss bringing the Russia-Ukraine war to a close, among other topics, the right-leaning U.S. media outlet reported. Reuters was not able to immediately verify the report. (Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin and Elizabeth Howcroft in Paris and Andreas Rinke in Berlin; Editing by Rod Nickel)

Donald Trump's AI ambition and China's DeepSeek overshadow an AI summit in Paris

It's the latest in a series of global dialogues around AI governance, but one that comes at a fresh inflection point as China's buzzy and budget-friendly DeepSeek chatbot shakes up the industry.The geopolitics of artificial intelligence will be in focus at a major summit in France where world leaders, executives and experts will hammer out pledges on guiding the development of the rapidly advancing technology. It's the latest in a series of global dialogues around AI governance, but one that comes at a fresh inflection point as China's buzzy and budget-friendly DeepSeek chatbot shakes up the industry. US Vice President JD Vance - making his first trip abroad since taking office - will attend the Paris AI Action Summit starting Feb. 10, while China's President Xi Jinping will be sending his special envoy, signaling high stakes for the meeting. Here's a breakdown: Summit basics Heads of state and top government officials, tech bosses and researchers are gathering in Paris for the two-day summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The event aims to address how to harness artificial intelligence's potential so that it benefits everyone, while containing the technology's myriad risks. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is attending, along with company officials from 80 countries, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Tesla chief Elon Musk, who attended the inaugural 2023 summit at former codebreaking base Bletchley Park in England, and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng have been invited, but it's unclear if either will attend. Panel talks and workshops at the Grand Palais venue on Monday will be followed by a dinner at the Elysee presidential palace for world leaders and CEOs. Leaders and company bosses are expected to give speeches at Tuesday's closing session. What's at stake? More than two years after ChatGPT 's debut, generative AI continues to make astounding advances at breakneck speed. The technology that powers all-purpose chatbots is transforming many aspects of life with its ability to spit out high-quality text, images or video, or carry out complex tasks. The 2023 summit in the U.K. resulted in a non-binding pledge by 28 nations to tackle AI risks. A follow-up meeting hosted by South Korea last year secured another pledge to set up a network of public AI safety institutes to advance research and testing. AI safety is still on the agenda in Paris, with an expert group reporting back on general purpose AI's possible extreme dangers. But this time organizers are expanding the discussion to more countries, and widening the debate to a range of other AI-related topics. Like previous editions, this summit won't produce any binding regulation. "The summit comes at a time when many are trying to position themselves in the international competition," Macron told reporters, according to La Provence newspaper. "It's about establishing the rules of the game. AI cannot be the Wild West." The deliverables Organizers are working on getting countries to sign a joint political declaration gathering commitments for more ethical, democratic and environmentally sustainable AI, according to Macron's office. But it's unclear whether the US would agree to such a measure. A public-interest partnership named "Current AI" is to be launched with an initial $400 million investment. The initiative aims at raising $2.5 billion over the next five years for the public-private partnership involving governments, businesses and philanthropic groups that will provide open-source access to databases, software and other tools for "trusted" AI actors, according to Macron's office. Macron's team wants to shift the focus away from the race to develop better-than-human artificial intelligence through sheer computing power and, instead, open up access to data that can help AI solve problems like cancer or long COVID. "We now have this incredible opportunity to figure out not only how we should mitigate the potential harms from artificial intelligence, but also how we can ensure that it's used to improve people's lives," said Martin Tisne, the summit's envoy for public interest AI. Trump's team US President Donald Trump has spoken of his desire to make the US the "world capital of artificial intelligence" by tapping its oil and gas reserves to feed the energy-hungry technology. Meanwhile, he has moved to withdraw the US - again - from the Paris climate agreement and revoked former President Joe Biden's executive order for AI guardrails. Trump is replacing it with his own AI policy designed to maintain America's global leadership by reducing regulatory barriers and building AI systems free of "ideological bias." The US position might undermine any joint communique, said Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at the Eurasia Group. "Trump is against the very idea of global governance," Reiners said. "It's one thing to get countries to agree that AI should have guardrails and that AI safety is something worth caring about. But they've widened the scope to talk about the future of work and the environment and inclusivity and so on - a whole range of concepts. So it's hard to imagine getting a widespread agreement on such a broad range of subjects." China's role Chinese leader Xi is sending Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, who's been elevated to the role of Xi's special representative. It's a big step up from the 2023 Bletchley meeting, when the Chinese government sent the vice minister of science and technology. It signifies that Xi wants China to play a bigger role in global AI governance as Trump pulls back, Reiners said. DeepSeek 's release last month stunned the world because of its ability to rival Western players like ChatGPT. It also escalated the wider geopolitical showdown between Beijing and Washington over tech supremacy. Trump said DeepSeek was a " wake-up call " for the US tech industry and his AI advisor David Sacks accused DeepSeek of training its model on stolen OpenAI data. The DeepSeek chatbot app now faces investigations, and in some cases, bans in the US and a number of other countries over privacy and security concerns. Yet the rise of DeepSeek, which built its open source AI model at a fraction of the cost and with fewer chips, also puts China's interests in line with France's. French organizers said "the summit aims at promoting an ambitious French and European AI strategy" as advances in the sector have been led by the US and China. Macron hopes to make room for others, including French startup Mistral, which also uses an open source AI model. "DeepSeek is being seen as a kind of vindication of this idea that you don't have to necessarily invest hundreds of billions of dollars in in chips and data centers," Reiners said. Transatlantic tensions Another showdown could involve Brussels, which has long been a thorn in the side of US-based Big Tech companies, cracking down with antitrust penalties against the likes of Google, Apple and Meta. Trump lashed out at last month's World Economic Forum with "very big complaints" about the EU's multibillion-dollar fines, calling them a tax on American companies. More recently, the European Union's artificial intelligence regulation has met resistance from the companies. The EU recently unveiled a non-binding "code of practice" for its AI Act but Meta's top lobbyist said the company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, won't sign up. The EU guidelines, intended to standardize how the AI Act's regulations are applied across the 27-nation bloc, are "unworkable" and the continent's regulatory environment is "pushing Europe to the sidelines," Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan told a Brussels event.

High-stakes AI summit in Paris: World leaders, tech titans and challenging diplomatic talks

PARIS -- Major world political leaders are meeting for an AI summit in Paris, where challenging diplomatic talks are expected while tech titans fight for dominance in the fast-moving technology industry. Heads of state, top government officials, CEOs and scientists from around 100 countries are participating in the two-day international summit starting Monday. High-profile attendees include U.S. Vice President JD Vance, on his first overseas trip since taking office, and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing. "We're living a technology and scientific revolution we've rarely seen," French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday on national television France 2. France and Europe must seize the "opportunity" because AI "will enable us to live better, learn better, work better, care better and it's up to us to put this artificial intelligence at the service of human beings," he said. The summit will give some European leaders a chance to meet Vance for the first time. The 40-year-old vice president was just 18 months into his time as Ohio's junior senator when Donald Trump picked him as his running mate. On Tuesday, Vance will have a working lunch with Macron, with discussions on Ukraine and the Middle East on the menu. Vance, like President Donald Trump, has questioned U.S. spending on Ukraine and the approach to isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump promised to end the fighting within six months of taking office. Vance will attend later this week the Munich Security Conference, where he may meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The vice president was joined by his wife Usha and their three children -- Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel -- for the trip to Europe. Leaders in Europe have been watching carefully Trump's recent statements on threats to impose tariffs on the European Union, take control of Greenland and his suggestion that Palestinians clear out Gaza once the fighting in the Israel-Hamas conflict ends -- an idea that's been flatly rejected by Arab allies. The summit, which gathers major players such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, aims at fostering AI advances in sectors like health, education, environment and culture. A global public-private partnership named "Current AI" is to be launched to support large-scale initiatives that serve the general interest. The Paris summit "is the first time we'll have had such a broad international discussion in one place on the future of AI," said Linda Griffin, vice president of public policy at Mozilla. "I see it as a norm-setting moment." Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, noted an opportunity to shape AI governance in a new direction by "moving away from this concentration of power amongst a handful of private actors and building this public interest AI instead." However, it remains unclear if the U.S. will support such initiatives. French organizers also hope the summit will lead to major investment announcements in Europe. France is to announce AI private investments worth a total of 109 billion euros ($113 billion) over the coming years, Macron said, presenting it as "the equivalent" of Trump's Stargate AI data centers project. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is co-hosting the summit with Macron, in an effort to involve more global actors in AI development and prevent the sector from becoming a U.S.-China battle. India's foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid "perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world." Macron will also travel Wednesday with Modi to the southern city port of Marseille to inaugurate a new Indian consulate and visit the ITER nuclear research site. France has become a key defense partner for India, with talks underway on purchasing 26 Rafale fighter jets and three Scorpene submarines. Officials in New Delhi said discussions are in final phase and the deal could be inked in a few weeks. ___ AP journalists Kelvin Chan in Paris and Aijaz Hussain in New Delhi contributed to this report.

Paris AI Summit: Can the US, China, and 100 Nations Agree on How To Regulate AI?

With the recent release of China's DeepSeek and subsequent backlash, the summit comes at a critical time for worldwide synergy. With the fresh introduction of China's disruptive DeepSeek, the EU's stringent AI Act, and U.S. President Donald Trump's vow to remove most of the guardrails from development -- the world is pretty split on how it should govern the rapidly advancing technology. With almost 100 nations on the guest list, including the U.S. and China, the Paris AI Summit next week is arriving at a crossroads for global artificial intelligence. This year's event appears to be less about creating new regulations and more about finding common ground. DeepSeek's Success Highlights Need for Global Synergy DeepSeek's emergence as a major player in China's AI ecosystem has sharpened the competitive edge in the global AI race, intensifying U.S.-China rivalry and highlighting the urgent need for international regulatory dialogue. After quickly becoming the most downloaded application in the U.S., the Chinese AI app sent American tech shares plummeting. Compared to leading U.S. rivals, the app's lower development costs raises questions about America's AI dominance. However, despite seeing major success overseas, the Chinese-made app has faced extreme pushback from lawmakers -- mirroring the same actions taken against TikTok. The Italian Data Protection Authority ordered a nationwide ban of DeepSeek on 28 January, while Australia recently banned all DeepSeek products from government systems. "AI is a technology full of potential and opportunity, but the Government will not hesitate to act when our agencies identify a national security risk," Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said . However, lawmakers may have good reason to be concerned about DeepSeek's entry into the global market. On January 29, Wiz Research published a report warning that a DeepSeek database had been left exposed, exposing "over a million lines of log streams with highly sensitive information." Can AI Common Ground be Found? While it is unlikely that the U.S., China, and nearly 100 other nations will immediately agree on binding regulations, the summit may well succeed in establishing a common foundation. Reuters reported, citing people involved in the summit, that European companies like France-based Mistral AI have been calling for more flexible ways to implement the EU AI Act without slowing down development. Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch has been a fierce campaigner for fewer regulations in the EU, arguing that they limit innovation. In the U.K., Prime Minister Keir Starmer reversed the previous government's focus on AI regulation to unveil a high-tech action plan. The new pledges come after tech companies warned that the U.K. risked falling behind the U.S. if it remained focused on regulation over innovation. Paris AI Summit France and India will be hosting the AI Summit in Paris on February 10-11. Unlike last year, which focused on creating new regulations to mitigate the dangers of AI, this summit will primarily look at "open-source" systems and providing clean energy to power data centers. The summit is expected to host leading executives from Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and OpenAI. According to Reuters, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, will give an on-stage talk during the event.

Trump's AI ambition, China's DeepSeek overshadow AI summit in Paris

The geopolitics of artificial intelligence will be in focus at a major summit in France where world leaders, executives and experts will hammer out pledges on guiding the development of the rapidly advancing technology. It's the latest in a series of global dialogues around AI governance, but one that comes at a fresh inflection point as China's buzzy and budget-friendly DeepSeek chatbot shakes up the industry. US Vice President JD Vance - making his first trip abroad since taking office - will attend the Paris AI Action Summit starting Feb. 10, while China's President Xi Jinping will be sending his special envoy, signaling high stakes for the meeting. Here's a breakdown Summit basics Heads of state and top government officials, tech bosses and researchers are gathering in Paris for the two-day summit cohosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The event aims to address how to harness artificial intelligence's potential so that it benefits everyone, while containing the technology's myriad risks. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is attending, along with officials and CEOs from 80 countries, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who attended the inaugural 2023 summit at former codebreaking base Bletchley Park in England, and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng have been invited, but it's unclear if either will attend. Panel talks and workshops at the Grand Palais venue on Monday will be followed by a dinner at the Elysee presidential palace for world leaders and CEOs. Leaders and company bosses are expected to give speeches at Tuesday's closing session. What's at stake? More than two years after ChatGPT's debut, generative AI continues to make astounding advances at breakneck speed. The technology that powers all-purpose chatbots is transforming many aspects of life with its ability to spit out high-quality text, images or video, or carry out complex tasks. The 2023 summit in the UK resulted in a non-binding pledge by 28 nations to tackle AI risks. A follow-up meeting hosted by South Korea last year secured another pledge to set up a network of public AI safety institutes to advance research and testing. AI safety is still on the agenda in Paris, with an expert group reporting back on general purpose AI's possible extreme dangers. But this time organizers are expanding the discussion to more countries, and widening the debate to a range of other AI-related topics. Like previous editions, this summit won't produce any binding regulation. "The summit comes at a time when many are trying to position themselves in the international competition," Macron told reporters, according to La Provence newspaper. "It's about establishing the rules of the game. AI cannot be the Wild West." The deliverables Organizers are working on getting countries to sign a joint political declaration gathering commitments for more ethical, democratic and environmentally sustainable AI, according to Macron's office. But it's unclear whether the US would agree to such a measure. Another big goal is securing an agreement for a public-interest partnership for AI. Paris seeks to raise 2.5 billion euros ($2.6 billion) for the public-private partnership involving governments, businesses and philanthropic groups that will provide open-source access to databases, software and other tools for "trusted" AI actors, Macron's office said. Macron's team wants to shift the focus away from the race to develop better-than-human artificial intelligence through sheer computing power and, instead, open up access to data that can help AI solve problems like cancer or long COVID. "We now have this incredible opportunity to figure out not only how we should mitigate the potential harms from artificial intelligence, but also how we can ensure that it's used to improve people's lives," said Martin Tisne, the summit's special envoy for public interest AI. Trump's team US President Donald Trump has spoken of his desire to make the U.S. the "world capital of artificial intelligence" by tapping its oil and gas reserves to feed the energy-hungry technology. Meanwhile, he has moved to withdraw the US - again - from the Paris climate agreement and revoked former President Joe Biden's executive order for AI guardrails. Trump is replacing it with his own AI policy designed to maintain America's global leadership by reducing regulatory barriers and building AI systems free of "ideological bias." The US position might undermine any joint communique, said Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at the Eurasia Group. "Trump is against the very idea of global governance," Reiners said. "It's one thing to get countries to agree that AI should have guardrails and that AI safety is something worth caring about. But they've widened the scope to talk about the future of work and the environment and inclusivity and so on - a whole range of concepts. So it's hard to imagine getting a widespread agreement on such a broad range of subjects." China's role Chinese leader Xi is sending Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, who's been elevated to the role of Xi's special representative. It's a big step up from the 2023 Bletchley meeting, when the Chinese government sent the vice minister of science and technology. It signifies that Xi wants China to play a bigger role in global AI governance as Trump pulls back, Reiners said. DeepSeek 's release last month stunned the world because of its ability to rival Western players like ChatGPT. It also escalated the wider geopolitical showdown between Beijing and Washington over tech supremacy. Trump said DeepSeek was a "wake-up call" for the US tech industry and his AI advisor David Sacks accused DeepSeek of training its model on stolen OpenAI data. The DeepSeek chatbot app now faces investigations, and in some cases, bans in the US and a number of other countries over privacy and security concerns. Yet the rise of DeepSeek, which built its open source AI model at a fraction of the cost and with fewer chips, also puts China's interests in line with France's. Organizers want the summit to act as a "wake-up call" for France and the wider European tech scene to catch up with AI advances, which have been led by the US and China. Macron hopes to make room for others, including French startup Mistral, which also uses an open source AI model. "DeepSeek is being seen as a kind of vindication of this idea that you don't have to necessarily invest hundreds of billions of dollars in in chips and data centers," Reiners said. Transatlantic tensions Another showdown could involve Brussels, which has long been a thorn in the side of US-based Big Tech companies, cracking down with antitrust penalties against the likes of Google, Apple and Meta. Trump lashed out at last month's World Economic Forum with "very big complaints" about the EU's multibillion-dollar fines, calling them a tax on American companies. More recently, the EU's artificial intelligence regulation has met resistance from the companies. The European Union recently unveiled a non-binding "code of practice" for its AI Act but Meta's top lobbyist said the company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, won't sign up. The EU guidelines, intended to standardize how the AI Act's regulations are applied across the 27-nation bloc, are "unworkable" and the continent's regulatory environment is "pushing Europe to the sidelines," Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan told a Brussels event.

High-stakes AI summit in Paris: World leaders, tech titans and challenging diplomatic talks

PARIS (AP) -- Major world political leaders are meeting for an AI summit in Paris, where challenging diplomatic talks are expected while tech titans fight for dominance in the fast-moving technology industry. Heads of state, top government officials, CEOs and scientists from around 100 countries are participating in the two-day international summit starting Monday. High-profile attendees include U.S. Vice President JD Vance, on his first overseas trip since taking office, and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing. "We're living a technology and scientific revolution we've rarely seen," French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday on national television France 2. France and Europe must seize the "opportunity" because AI "will enable us to live better, learn better, work better, care better and it's up to us to put this artificial intelligence at the service of human beings," he said. The summit will give some European leaders a chance to meet Vance for the first time. The 40-year-old vice president was just 18 months into his time as Ohio's junior senator when Donald Trump picked him as his running mate. On Tuesday, Vance will have a working lunch with Macron, with discussions on Ukraine and the Middle East on the menu. Vance, like President Donald Trump, has questioned U.S. spending on Ukraine and the approach to isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump promised to end the fighting within six months of taking office. Vance will attend later this week the Munich Security Conference, where he may meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The vice president was joined by his wife Usha and their three children -- Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel -- for the trip to Europe. Leaders in Europe have been watching carefully Trump's recent statements on threats to impose tariffs on the European Union, take control of Greenland and his suggestion that Palestinians clear out Gaza once the fighting in the Israel-Hamas conflict ends -- an idea that's been flatly rejected by Arab allies. The summit, which gathers major players such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, aims at fostering AI advances in sectors like health, education, environment and culture. A global public-private partnership named "Current AI" is to be launched to support large-scale initiatives that serve the general interest. The Paris summit "is the first time we'll have had such a broad international discussion in one place on the future of AI," said Linda Griffin, vice president of public policy at Mozilla. "I see it as a norm-setting moment." Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, noted an opportunity to shape AI governance in a new direction by "moving away from this concentration of power amongst a handful of private actors and building this public interest AI instead." However, it remains unclear if the U.S. will support such initiatives. French organizers also hope the summit will lead to major investment announcements in Europe. France is to announce AI private investments worth a total of 109 billion euros ($113 billion) over the coming years, Macron said, presenting it as "the equivalent" of Trump's Stargate AI data centers project. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is co-hosting the summit with Macron, in an effort to involve more global actors in AI development and prevent the sector from becoming a U.S.-China battle. India's foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid "perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world." Macron will also travel Wednesday with Modi to the southern city port of Marseille to inaugurate a new Indian consulate and visit the ITER nuclear research site. France has become a key defense partner for India, with talks underway on purchasing 26 Rafale fighter jets and three Scorpene submarines. Officials in New Delhi said discussions are in final phase and the deal could be inked in a few weeks. AP journalists Kelvin Chan in Paris and Aijaz Hussain in New Delhi contributed to this report.

High-stakes AI summit in Paris: World leaders, tech titans and challenging diplomatic talks

Major world leaders are meeting for an AI summit in Paris, where challenging diplomatic talks are expected as tech titans fight for dominance in the fast-moving technology industry. Heads of state, top government officials, CEOs and scientists from around 100 countries are participating in the two-day international summit from Monday. High-profile attendees include U.S. Vice President JD Vance, on his first overseas trip since taking office, and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing. "We're living a technology and scientific revolution we've rarely seen," French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday on national television France 2. France and Europe must seize the "opportunity" because AI "will enable us to live better, learn better, work better, care better and it's up to us to put this artificial intelligence at the service of human beings," he said. The summit will give some European leaders a chance to meet Vance for the first time. The 40-year-old vice president was just 18 months into his time as Ohio's junior senator when Donald Trump picked him as his running mate. Vance was joined by his wife Usha and their three children -- Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel -- for the trip to Europe. They were greeted on French soil Monday morning by Manuel Valls, the minister for Overseas France, and the U.S. Embassy's charge d'affaires, David McCawley. On Tuesday, Vance will have a working lunch with Macron, with discussions on Ukraine and the Middle East on the menu. Vance, like President Donald Trump, has questioned U.S. spending on Ukraine and the approach to isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump promised to end the fighting within six months of taking office. Vance will attend later this week the Munich Security Conference, where he may meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Leaders in Europe have been watching carefully Trump's recent statements on threats to impose tariffs on the European Union, take control of Greenland and his suggestion that Palestinians clear out Gaza once the fighting in the Israel-Hamas conflict ends -- an idea that's been flatly rejected by Arab allies. The summit, which gathers major players such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, aims at fostering AI advances in sectors like health, education, environment and culture. A global public-private partnership named "Current AI" is to be launched to support large-scale initiatives that serve the general interest. The Paris summit "is the first time we'll have had such a broad international discussion in one place on the future of AI," said Linda Griffin, vice president of public policy at Mozilla. "I see it as a norm-setting moment." Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, noted an opportunity to shape AI governance in a new direction by "moving away from this concentration of power amongst a handful of private actors and building this public interest AI instead." However, it remains unclear if the U.S. will support such initiatives. French organizers also hope the summit will lead to major investment announcements in Europe. France is to announce AI private investments worth a total of $113 billion over the coming years, Macron said, presenting it as "the equivalent" of Trump's Stargate AI data centers project. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is co-hosting the summit with Macron, in an effort to involve more global actors in AI development and prevent the sector from becoming a U.S.-China battle. India's foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid "perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world." Macron will also travel Wednesday with Modi to the southern city port of Marseille to inaugurate a new Indian consulate and visit the ITER nuclear research site. France has become a key defense partner for India, with talks underway on purchasing 26 Rafale fighter jets and three Scorpene submarines. Officials in New Delhi said discussions are in final phase and the deal could be inked in a few weeks.

High-stakes AI summit in Paris: World leaders, tech titans and challenging diplomatic talks

Fostering AI advances the summit, with major players such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, aims at supporting AI advances in sectors such as health, education, environment and culture. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is co-hosting the summit with Macron, in an effort to involve more global actors in AI development and prevent the sector from becoming a US-China battle.Major world political leaders are meeting for an AI summit in Paris, where challenging diplomatic talks are expected while tech titans fight for dominance in the fast-moving technology industry. Heads of state, top government officials, CEOs and scientists from around 100 countries are participating in the two-day international summit starting Monday. High-profile attendees include US Vice President JD Vance, on his first overseas trip since taking office, and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing. "We're living a technology and scientific revolution we've rarely seen," French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday on national television France 2. France and Europe must seize the "opportunity" because AI "will enable us to live better, learn better, work better, care better and it's up to us to put this artificial intelligence at the service of human beings," he said. Vance's debut abroad the summit will give some European leaders a chance to meet Vance for the first time. The 40-year-old vice president was just 18 months into his time as Ohio's junior senator when Donald Trump picked him as his running mate. On Tuesday, Vance will have a working lunch with Macron, with discussions on Ukraine and the Middle East on the menu. Vance, like President Donald Trump, has questioned US spending on Ukraine and the approach to isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump promised to end the fighting within six months of taking office. Vance will attend later this week the Munich Security Conference, where he may meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The vice president was joined by his wife Usha and their three children - Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel - for the trip to Europe. Leaders in Europe have been watching carefully Trump's recent statements on threats to impose tariffs on the European Union, take control of Greenland and his suggestion that Palestinians clear out Gaza once the fighting in the Israel-Hamas conflict ends - an idea that's been flatly rejected by Arab allies. Fostering AI advances the summit, which gathers major players such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, aims at fostering AI advances in sectors like health, education, environment and culture. A global public-private partnership named "Current AI" is to be launched to support large-scale initiatives that serve the general interest. The Paris summit "is the first time we'll have had such a broad international discussion in one place on the future of AI," said Linda Griffin, vice president of public policy at Mozilla. "I see it as a norm-setting moment." Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, noted an opportunity to shape AI governance in a new direction by "moving away from this concentration of power amongst a handful of private actors and building this public interest AI instead." However, it remains unclear if the US will support such initiatives. French organizers also hope the summit will lead to major investment announcements in Europe. France is to announce AI private investments worth a total of 109 billion euros ($113 billion) over the coming years, Macron said, presenting it as "the equivalent" of Trump's Stargate AI data centers project. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is co-hosting the summit with Macron, in an effort to involve more global actors in AI development and prevent the sector from becoming a US-China battle. India's foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid "perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world." Macron will also travel Wednesday with Modi to the southern city port of Marseille to inaugurate a new Indian consulate and visit the ITER nuclear research site. France has become a key defense partner for India, with talks underway on purchasing 26 Rafale fighter jets and three Scorpene submarines. Officials in New Delhi said discussions are in final phase and the deal could be inked in a few weeks.

AI summit in Paris: World leaders, tech titans and challenging diplomatic talks

PARIS -- Major world political leaders are meeting for an AI summit in Paris, where challenging diplomatic talks are expected while tech titans fight for dominance in the fast-moving technology industry. Heads of state, top government officials, CEOs and scientists from around 100 countries are participating in the two-day international summit starting Monday. High-profile attendees include U.S. Vice President JD Vance, on his first overseas trip since taking office, and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing. "We're living a technology and scientific revolution we've rarely seen," French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday on national television France 2. France and Europe must seize the "opportunity" because AI "will enable us to live better, learn better, work better, care better and it's up to us to put this artificial intelligence at the service of human beings," he said. The summit will give some European leaders a chance to meet Vance for the first time. The 40-year-old vice president was just 18 months into his time as Ohio's junior senator when Donald Trump picked him as his running mate. On Tuesday, Vance will have a working lunch with Macron, with discussions on Ukraine and the Middle East on the menu. Vance, like President Donald Trump, has questioned U.S. spending on Ukraine and the approach to isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump promised to end the fighting within six months of taking office. Vance will attend later this week the Munich Security Conference, where he may meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The vice president was joined by his wife Usha and their three children -- Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel -- for the trip to Europe. Leaders in Europe have been watching carefully Trump's recent statements on threats to impose tariffs on the European Union, take control of Greenland and his suggestion that Palestinians clear out Gaza once the fighting in the Israel-Hamas conflict ends -- an idea that's been flatly rejected by Arab allies. The summit, which gathers major players such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, aims at fostering AI advances in sectors like health, education, environment and culture. A global public-private partnership named "Current AI" is to be launched to support large-scale initiatives that serve the general interest. The Paris summit "is the first time we'll have had such a broad international discussion in one place on the future of AI," said Linda Griffin, vice president of public policy at Mozilla. "I see it as a norm-setting moment." Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, noted an opportunity to shape AI governance in a new direction by "moving away from this concentration of power amongst a handful of private actors and building this public interest AI instead." However, it remains unclear if the U.S. will support such initiatives. French organizers also hope the summit will lead to major investment announcements in Europe. France is to announce AI private investments worth a total of 109 billion euros ($113 billion) over the coming years, Macron said, presenting it as "the equivalent" of Trump's Stargate AI data centers project. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is co-hosting the summit with Macron, in an effort to involve more global actors in AI development and prevent the sector from becoming a U.S.-China battle. India's foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid "perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world." Macron will also travel Wednesday with Modi to the southern city port of Marseille to inaugurate a new Indian consulate and visit the ITER nuclear research site. France has become a key defense partner for India, with talks underway on purchasing 26 Rafale fighter jets and three Scorpene submarines. Officials in New Delhi said discussions are in final phase and the deal could be inked in a few weeks. ___ AP journalists Kelvin Chan in Paris and Aijaz Hussain in New Delhi contributed to this report.

Government chiefs and tech leaders gather in Paris for AI summit

French President Emmanuel Macron, left, French Journalist Laurent Delahousse, center, and Indian Journalist Palki Sharma Upadhyay pose during a televised interview broadcasted on TV channel France 2 and in India on the eve of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit, at the Grand Palais, in Paris, France, Feb. 9. AFP-Yonhap Political and tech industry leaders were set to descend on Paris Monday 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. Monday's meeting of around 1,500 guests in the French capital's opulent Grand Palais will feature lectures and panel discussions outlining the promises of and challenges posed by AI, from around 9:30 a.m. (local times) 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 Sunday trumpeted the benefits of artificial intelligence and French efforts in the field. 'Stargate' sets the pace 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. Sunday's 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 centers. These vast buildings concentrate in one place the data storage and processing power needed to develop and run the most advanced AI models. "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. Police patrol outside of the entrance to the Grand Palais, which will be the venue for an upcoming AI Action Summit, in Paris, France, Feb. 9. AP-Yonhap Global governance puzzle Away from the investment grandstanding, a group of countries, companies and philanthropic organizations said Sunday 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." "We've seen the harms of unchecked tech development and the transformative potential it holds when aligned with the public interest," Current AI founder Martin Tisne said. On Tuesday, 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. (AFP)

'Engine of inequality': fears over AI's global impact dominate Paris summit

Emmanuel Macron's tech envoy warns delegates current trajectory of artificial intelligence is unsustainable The impact of artificial intelligence on the environment and inequality has dominated the opening exchanges of a global summit in Paris attended by political leaders, tech executives and experts. Emmanuel Macron's AI envoy, Anne Bouverot, opened the two-day gathering at the Grand Palais in the heart of the French capital with a speech referring to the environmental impact of AI, which requires vast amounts of energy and resource to develop and operate. "We know that AI can help mitigate climate change, but we also know that its current trajectory is unsustainable," Bouverot said. Sustainable development of the technology would be on the agenda, she added. The general secretary of the UNI Global Union, Christy Hoffman, warned that without worker involvement in the use of AI, the technology risked increasing inequality. The UNI represents about 20 million workers worldwide in industries including retail, finance and entertainment. "Without worker representation, AI-driven productivity gains risk turning the technology into yet another engine of inequality, further straining our democracies," she told attenders. On Sunday Macron promoted the event by posting a montage of deepfake images of himself on Instagram, including a video of "him" dancing in a disco with various 80s hairstyles, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the technology's capabilities. Although safety has been downplayed on the conference agenda, some in attendance were concerned about the pace of development. Max Tegmark, the scientist behind a 2023 letter calling for a pause in producing powerful AI systems, cautioned that governments and tech companies were inadvertently re-enacting the ending of the Netflix climate crisis satire Don't Look Up. The film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence uses a looming comet, and the refusal by the political and media establishment to acknowledge the existential threat, as a metaphor for the climate emergency - with the meteor ultimately wiping out the planet. "I feel like I have been living that movie," Tegmark told the Guardian in an interview. "But now it feels l like we've reached the part of the film where you can see the asteroid in the sky. And people are still saying that it doesn't exist. It really feels like life imitating art." Tegmark said the promising work at the inaugural summit at Bletchley Park in the UK in November 2023 had been partly undone. "Basically, asteroid denial is back in full swing," he said. The Paris gathering has been badged as the AI action summit, whereas its UK cousin was the AI safety summit. Macron is co-chairing the summit with India's prime minister, Narendra Modi. The US vice-president, JD Vance, and Chinese vice premier, Zhang Guoqing, are among the other political attenders, although UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer is not attending. Existential concerns about AI focus on the development of artificial general intelligence, the term for systems that can match or exceed human intellectual capabilities at nearly all cognitive tasks. Estimates of when, and if, AGI will be reached vary but Tegmark said based on statements from industry figures "the asteroid is going to strike ... somewhere between one and five years from now." Developments in AI have accelerated since 2023, with the emergence of so-called reasoning models pushing the capabilities of systems even further. The release of a freely available reasoning model by the Chinese company DeepSeek has also intensified the competitive rivalry between China and the US, which has led AI breakthroughs. The head of Google's AI efforts, Demis Hassabis, said on Sunday the tech industry was "perhaps five years away" from achieving AGI and safety conversations needed to continue. "Society needs to get ready for that and ... the implications that will have." Speaking in Paris before the summit, Hassabis added that AGI carried "inherent risk", particularly in the field of autonomous "agents", which carry out tasks without human intervention, but those concerns could be assuaged. "I'm a big believer in human ingenuity. I think if we put the best brains on it, and with enough time and enough care ... then I think we'll get it right."

Macron beats French investment drum ahead of AI summit

Paris (AFP) - French President Emmanuel Macron trumpeted the benefits of artificial intelligence Sunday, ahead of a two-day Paris summit on the technology and its potential benefits and pitfalls. Co-hosted with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the summit has a slew of stated aims including "mapping" AI governance around the world, promoting the idea of more ethical, accessible and frugal AI and pushing for European sovereignty over the technology. But announcements ahead of the gathering could have been confused with Macron's annual "Choose France" investor conference, with tens of billions pledged for investment in projects including data centres in the host country. France would receive "109 billion euros ($113 billion) of investment in artificial intelligence in the coming years" from the United Arab Emirates, "major American and Canadian investment funds" and French companies, Macron told broadcaster TF1 in a Sunday interview. He also took time to plug French medical technology and homegrown generative AI developer Mistral. The 109-billion-euro figure was "the equivalent for France of what the US has announced with 'Stargate'," the $500-billion US programme 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 and 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. Data centre buildup Monday's gathering of around 1,500 guests in the French capital's opulent Grand Palais will feature lectures and panel discussions outlining the promises of and challenges posed by AI from around 9:30 am local time (0830 GMT). Macron wants to show off France's own tech sector, which has around 750 startups working in the AI field. He will speak towards the end of Monday's event, after hosting heads of government and international investors at his Elysee Palace residence throughout the day. From the tech world, OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Arthur Mensch of French startup MistralAI are among the attendees. Mensch said late Sunday that his company would invest several billion euros to build its own data centre in France. The firm aims to "control the whole value chain, from the computer to the software," the 32-year-old said. Data centres offer AI companies the vast storage capacity and processing power to develop and run their systems. France has pushed itself as an ideal data centre host, betting on its offer of low-carbon electricity from its fleet of nuclear plants to attract investors. The United Arab Emirates on Thursday pledged to build a data centre on an AI campus worth up to $50 billion, while Canadian investment fund Brookfield pledged 20 billion euros for multiple centres. Global governance puzzle Away from the investment grandstanding, a group of countries, companies and philanthropic organisations said Sunday 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". "We've seen the harms of unchecked tech development and the transformative potential it holds when aligned with the public interest," Current AI founder Martin Tisne said in the statement. On Tuesday, political leaders from around 100 countries will hold a plenary session, with notable attendees including Modi, US Vice President JD Vance, China's Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. 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.

Trump's AI ambition and China's DeepSeek overshadow an AI summit in Paris

PARIS -- The geopolitics of artificial intelligence will be in focus at a major summit in France where world leaders, executives and experts will hammer out pledges on guiding the development of the rapidly advancing technology. It's the latest in a series of global dialogues around AI governance, but one that comes at a fresh inflection point as China's buzzy and budget-friendly DeepSeek chatbot shakes up the industry. U.S. Vice President JD Vance -- making his first trip abroad since taking office -- will attend the Paris AI Action Summit starting Feb. 10, while China's President Xi Jinping will be sending his special envoy, signaling high stakes for the meeting. Here's a breakdown: Heads of state and top government officials, tech bosses and researchers are gathering in Paris for the two-day summit cohosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The event aims to address how to harness artificial intelligence's potential so that it benefits everyone, while containing the technology's myriad risks. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is attending, along with officials and CEOs from 80 countries, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who attended the inaugural 2023 summit at former codebreaking base Bletchley Park in England, and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng have been invited, but it's unclear if either will attend. Panel talks and workshops at the Grand Palais venue on Monday will be followed by a dinner at the Elysee presidential palace for world leaders and CEOs. Leaders and company bosses are expected to give speeches at Tuesday's closing session. More than two years after ChatGPT's debut, generative AI continues to make astounding advances at breakneck speed. The technology that powers all-purpose chatbots is transforming many aspects of life with its ability to spit out high-quality text, images or video, or carry out complex tasks. The 2023 summit in the U.K. resulted in a non-binding pledge by 28 nations to tackle AI risks. A follow-up meeting hosted by South Korea last year secured another pledge to set up a network of public AI safety institutes to advance research and testing. AI safety is still on the agenda in Paris, with an expert group reporting back on general purpose AI's possible extreme dangers. But this time organizers are expanding the discussion to more countries, and widening the debate to a range of other AI-related topics. Like previous editions, this summit won't produce any binding regulation. "The summit comes at a time when many are trying to position themselves in the international competition," Macron told reporters, according to La Provence newspaper. "It's about establishing the rules of the game. AI cannot be the Wild West." Organizers are working on getting countries to sign a joint political declaration gathering commitments for more ethical, democratic and environmentally sustainable AI, according to Macron's office. But it's unclear whether the U.S. would agree to such a measure. Another big goal is securing an agreement for a public-interest partnership for AI. Paris seeks to raise 2.5 billion euros ($2.6 billion) for the public-private partnership involving governments, businesses and philanthropic groups that will provide open-source access to databases, software and other tools for "trusted" AI actors, Macron's office said. Macron's team wants to shift the focus away from the race to develop better-than-human artificial intelligence through sheer computing power and, instead, open up access to data that can help AI solve problems like cancer or long COVID. "We now have this incredible opportunity to figure out not only how we should mitigate the potential harms from artificial intelligence, but also how we can ensure that it's used to improve people's lives," said Martin Tisné, the summit's special envoy for public interest AI. U.S. President Donald Trump has spoken of his desire to make the U.S. the "world capital of artificial intelligence" by tapping its oil and gas reserves to feed the energy-hungry technology. Meanwhile, he has moved to withdraw the U.S. -- again -- from the Paris climate agreement and revoked former President Joe Biden's executive order for AI guardrails. Trump is replacing it with his own AI policy designed to maintain America's global leadership by reducing regulatory barriers and building AI systems free of "ideological bias." The U.S. position might undermine any joint communique, said Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at the Eurasia Group. "Trump is against the very idea of global governance," Reiners said. "It's one thing to get countries to agree that AI should have guardrails and that AI safety is something worth caring about. But they've widened the scope to talk about the future of work and the environment and inclusivity and so on -- a whole range of concepts. So it's hard to imagine getting a widespread agreement on such a broad range of subjects." Chinese leader Xi is sending Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, who's been elevated to the role of Xi's special representative. It's a big step up from the 2023 Bletchley meeting, when the Chinese government sent the vice minister of science and technology. It signifies that Xi wants China to play a bigger role in global AI governance as Trump pulls back, Reiners said. DeepSeek 's release last month stunned the world because of its ability to rival Western players like ChatGPT. It also escalated the wider geopolitical showdown between Beijing and Washington over tech supremacy. Trump said DeepSeek was a "wake-up call" for the U.S. tech industry and his AI advisor David Sacks accused DeepSeek of training its model on stolen OpenAI data. The DeepSeek chatbot app now faces investigations, and in some cases, bans in the U.S. and a number of other countries over privacy and security concerns. Yet the rise of DeepSeek, which built its open source AI model at a fraction of the cost and with fewer chips, also puts China's interests in line with France's. Organizers want the summit to act as a "wake-up call" for France and the wider European tech scene to catch up with AI advances, which have been led by the U.S. and China. Macron hopes to make room for others, including French startup Mistral, which also uses an open source AI model. "DeepSeek is being seen as a kind of vindication of this idea that you don't have to necessarily invest hundreds of billions of dollars in in chips and data centers," Reiners said. Another showdown could involve Brussels, which has long been a thorn in the side of U.S.-based Big Tech companies, cracking down with antitrust penalties against the likes of Google, Apple and Meta. Trump lashed out at last month's World Economic Forum with "very big complaints" about the EU's multibillion-dollar fines, calling them a tax on American companies. More recently, the EU's artificial intelligence regulation has met resistance from the companies. The European Union recently unveiled a non-binding "code of practice" for its AI Act but Meta's top lobbyist said the company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, won't sign up. The EU guidelines, intended to standardize how the AI Act's regulations are applied across the 27-nation bloc, are "unworkable" and the continent's regulatory environment is "pushing Europe to the sidelines," Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan told a Brussels event. -- -- Chan reported from London. AP writer John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.

Scientists' conference kicks off global AI summit in Paris

Global experts will debate threats from artificial intelligence (AI) at a gathering in Paris on Thursday and Friday, ahead of a summit of world leaders on the fast-moving technology. Thousands are expected for the event aiming to find common ground on a technology that has upset many business sectors in less than two years -- as well as to keep France and Europe on the map as credible contenders in the AI race. Scientists including Yann LeCun, AI chief for Facebook owner Meta, will discuss its impact on fields including work, health and sustainability from Thursday at the prestigious Polytechnique engineering school. The Frenchman, one of the fathers of the current wave of AI, and 20 other high-profile researchers dined with Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, the French president's Elysee Palace office said. Saturday and Sunday will see talks on AI's impact on culture before heads of state and government from around 100 countries and global tech industry leaders gather on Monday and Tuesday. DeepSeek invited High-profile attendees will include US Vice President JD Vance, China's Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is co-hosting the summit as Macron seeks to involve the Global South in a technology battle that is for now largely playing out between the United States and China. From the business side, X and Tesla chief Elon Musk has yet to confirm attendance -- as has Liang Wengfeng, founder of Chinese startup DeepSeek, which shocked the world with its frugal, high-performance R1 model last week. American figures such as OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, as well as Arthur Mensch of French AI developer Mistral, will all join the gathering. In science, Meta's LeCun will be be flanked by the likes of Demis Hassabis, the Nobel chemistry prize-winning head of Google's DeepMind AI research lab, and Berkeley machine learning researcher Michael Jordan. Three more Nobel winners -- computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, journalist Maria Ressa and economist Joseph Stiglitz -- will join a conference hosted by the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI (IASEI), created only last year. French AI efforts France hopes that the conference can reinforce its leading European position in AI, having already drawn several labs from leading AI firms to Paris, including Google, Meta and OpenAI. The Polytechnique school has been singled out to host the scientific conference as a symbol of French excellence in the field. "This summit has to be a moment to position Paris as the global capital of AI," digital minister Clara Chappaz told AFP journalists. After a month in which DeepSeek's emergence shocked even Silicon Valley titans and the United States announced a $500-billion AI investment scheme, France and Europe have a lot to prove in the coming days. Paris plans to announce major investments running into the billions, including for new data centers on its territory.

Trump's AI ambition and China's DeepSeek overshadow an AI summit in Paris

PARIS (AP) -- The geopolitics of artificial intelligence will be in focus at a major summit in France where world leaders, executives and experts will hammer out pledges on guiding the development of the rapidly advancing technology. It's the latest in a series of global dialogues around AI governance, but one that comes at a fresh inflection point as China's buzzy and budget-friendly DeepSeek chatbot shakes up the industry. U.S. Vice President JD Vance -- making his first trip abroad since taking office -- will attend the Paris AI Action Summit starting Feb. 10, while China's President Xi Jinping will be sending his special envoy, signaling high stakes for the meeting. Here's a breakdown: Heads of state and top government officials, tech bosses and researchers are gathering in Paris for the two-day summit cohosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The event aims to address how to harness artificial intelligence's potential so that it benefits everyone, while containing the technology's myriad risks. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is attending, along with officials and CEOs from 80 countries, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who attended the inaugural 2023 summit at former codebreaking base Bletchley Park in England, and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng have been invited, but it's unclear if either will attend. Panel talks and workshops at the Grand Palais venue on Monday will be followed by a dinner at the Elysee presidential palace for world leaders and CEOs. Leaders and company bosses are expected to give speeches at Tuesday's closing session. More than two years after ChatGPT's debut, generative AI continues to make astounding advances at breakneck speed. The technology that powers all-purpose chatbots is transforming many aspects of life with its ability to spit out high-quality text, images or video, or carry out complex tasks. The 2023 summit in the U.K. resulted in a non-binding pledge by 28 nations to tackle AI risks. A follow-up meeting hosted by South Korea last year secured another pledge to set up a network of public AI safety institutes to advance research and testing. AI safety is still on the agenda in Paris, with an expert group reporting back on general purpose AI's possible extreme dangers. But this time organizers are expanding the discussion to more countries, and widening the debate to a range of other AI-related topics. Like previous editions, this summit won't produce any binding regulation. "The summit comes at a time when many are trying to position themselves in the international competition," Macron told reporters, according to La Provence newspaper. "It's about establishing the rules of the game. AI cannot be the Wild West." Organizers are working on getting countries to sign a joint political declaration gathering commitments for more ethical, democratic and environmentally sustainable AI, according to Macron's office. But it's unclear whether the U.S. would agree to such a measure. Another big goal is securing an agreement for a public-interest partnership for AI. Paris seeks to raise 2.5 billion euros ($2.6 billion) for the public-private partnership involving governments, businesses and philanthropic groups that will provide open-source access to databases, software and other tools for "trusted" AI actors, Macron's office said. Macron's team wants to shift the focus away from the race to develop better-than-human artificial intelligence through sheer computing power and, instead, open up access to data that can help AI solve problems like cancer or long COVID. "We now have this incredible opportunity to figure out not only how we should mitigate the potential harms from artificial intelligence, but also how we can ensure that it's used to improve people's lives," said Martin Tisné, the summit's special envoy for public interest AI. U.S. President Donald Trump has spoken of his desire to make the U.S. the "world capital of artificial intelligence" by tapping its oil and gas reserves to feed the energy-hungry technology. Meanwhile, he has moved to withdraw the U.S. -- again -- from the Paris climate agreement and revoked former President Joe Biden's executive order for AI guardrails. Trump is replacing it with his own AI policy designed to maintain America's global leadership by reducing regulatory barriers and building AI systems free of "ideological bias." The U.S. position might undermine any joint communique, said Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at the Eurasia Group. "Trump is against the very idea of global governance," Reiners said. "It's one thing to get countries to agree that AI should have guardrails and that AI safety is something worth caring about. But they've widened the scope to talk about the future of work and the environment and inclusivity and so on -- a whole range of concepts. So it's hard to imagine getting a widespread agreement on such a broad range of subjects." Chinese leader Xi is sending Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, who's been elevated to the role of Xi's special representative. It's a big step up from the 2023 Bletchley meeting, when the Chinese government sent the vice minister of science and technology. It signifies that Xi wants China to play a bigger role in global AI governance as Trump pulls back, Reiners said. DeepSeek 's release last month stunned the world because of its ability to rival Western players like ChatGPT. It also escalated the wider geopolitical showdown between Beijing and Washington over tech supremacy. Trump said DeepSeek was a "wake-up call" for the U.S. tech industry and his AI advisor David Sacks accused DeepSeek of training its model on stolen OpenAI data. The DeepSeek chatbot app now faces investigations, and in some cases, bans in the U.S. and a number of other countries over privacy and security concerns. Yet the rise of DeepSeek, which built its open source AI model at a fraction of the cost and with fewer chips, also puts China's interests in line with France's. Organizers want the summit to act as a "wake-up call" for France and the wider European tech scene to catch up with AI advances, which have been led by the U.S. and China. Macron hopes to make room for others, including French startup Mistral, which also uses an open source AI model. "DeepSeek is being seen as a kind of vindication of this idea that you don't have to necessarily invest hundreds of billions of dollars in in chips and data centers," Reiners said. Another showdown could involve Brussels, which has long been a thorn in the side of U.S.-based Big Tech companies, cracking down with antitrust penalties against the likes of Google, Apple and Meta. Trump lashed out at last month's World Economic Forum with "very big complaints" about the EU's multibillion-dollar fines, calling them a tax on American companies. More recently, the EU's artificial intelligence regulation has met resistance from the companies. The European Union recently unveiled a non-binding "code of practice" for its AI Act but Meta's top lobbyist said the company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, won't sign up. The EU guidelines, intended to standardize how the AI Act's regulations are applied across the 27-nation bloc, are "unworkable" and the continent's regulatory environment is "pushing Europe to the sidelines," Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan told a Brussels event. -- -- Chan reported from London. AP writer John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.

Trump's AI Ambition and China's DeepSeek Overshadow an AI Summit in Paris

PARIS (AP) -- The geopolitics of artificial intelligence will be in focus at a major summit in France where world leaders, executives and experts will hammer out pledges on guiding the development of the rapidly advancing technology. It's the latest in a series of global dialogues around AI governance, but one that comes at a fresh inflection point as China's buzzy and budget-friendly DeepSeek chatbot shakes up the industry. U.S. Vice President JD Vance -- making his first trip abroad since taking office -- will attend the Paris AI Action Summit starting Feb. 10, while China's President Xi Jinping will be sending his special envoy, signaling high stakes for the meeting. Heads of state and top government officials, tech bosses and researchers are gathering in Paris for the two-day summit cohosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The event aims to address how to harness artificial intelligence's potential so that it benefits everyone, while containing the technology's myriad risks. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is attending, along with officials and CEOs from 80 countries, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who attended the inaugural 2023 summit at former codebreaking base Bletchley Park in England, and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng have been invited, but it's unclear if either will attend. Panel talks and workshops at the Grand Palais venue on Monday will be followed by a dinner at the Elysee presidential palace for world leaders and CEOs. Leaders and company bosses are expected to give speeches at Tuesday's closing session. What's at stake? More than two years after ChatGPT's debut, generative AI continues to make astounding advances at breakneck speed. The technology that powers all-purpose chatbots is transforming many aspects of life with its ability to spit out high-quality text, images or video, or carry out complex tasks. The 2023 summit in the U.K. resulted in a non-binding pledge by 28 nations to tackle AI risks. A follow-up meeting hosted by South Korea last year secured another pledge to set up a network of public AI safety institutes to advance research and testing. AI safety is still on the agenda in Paris, with an expert group reporting back on general purpose AI's possible extreme dangers. But this time organizers are expanding the discussion to more countries, and widening the debate to a range of other AI-related topics. Like previous editions, this summit won't produce any binding regulation. "The summit comes at a time when many are trying to position themselves in the international competition," Macron told reporters, according to La Provence newspaper. "It's about establishing the rules of the game. AI cannot be the Wild West." The deliverables Organizers are working on getting countries to sign a joint political declaration gathering commitments for more ethical, democratic and environmentally sustainable AI, according to Macron's office. But it's unclear whether the U.S. would agree to such a measure. Another big goal is securing an agreement for a public-interest partnership for AI. Paris seeks to raise 2.5 billion euros ($2.6 billion) for the public-private partnership involving governments, businesses and philanthropic groups that will provide open-source access to databases, software and other tools for "trusted" AI actors, Macron's office said. Macron's team wants to shift the focus away from the race to develop better-than-human artificial intelligence through sheer computing power and, instead, open up access to data that can help AI solve problems like cancer or long COVID. "We now have this incredible opportunity to figure out not only how we should mitigate the potential harms from artificial intelligence, but also how we can ensure that it's used to improve people's lives," said Martin Tisné, the summit's special envoy for public interest AI. Trump's team U.S. President Donald Trump has spoken of his desire to make the U.S. the "world capital of artificial intelligence" by tapping its oil and gas reserves to feed the energy-hungry technology. Meanwhile, he has moved to withdraw the U.S. -- again -- from the Paris climate agreement and revoked former President Joe Biden's executive order for AI guardrails. Trump is replacing it with his own AI policy designed to maintain America's global leadership by reducing regulatory barriers and building AI systems free of "ideological bias." The U.S. position might undermine any joint communique, said Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at the Eurasia Group. "Trump is against the very idea of global governance," Reiners said. "It's one thing to get countries to agree that AI should have guardrails and that AI safety is something worth caring about. But they've widened the scope to talk about the future of work and the environment and inclusivity and so on -- a whole range of concepts. So it's hard to imagine getting a widespread agreement on such a broad range of subjects." China's role Chinese leader Xi is sending Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, who's been elevated to the role of Xi's special representative. It's a big step up from the 2023 Bletchley meeting, when the Chinese government sent the vice minister of science and technology. It signifies that Xi wants China to play a bigger role in global AI governance as Trump pulls back, Reiners said. DeepSeek 's release last month stunned the world because of its ability to rival Western players like ChatGPT. It also escalated the wider geopolitical showdown between Beijing and Washington over tech supremacy. Trump said DeepSeek was a "wake-up call" for the U.S. tech industry and his AI advisor David Sacks accused DeepSeek of training its model on stolen OpenAI data. The DeepSeek chatbot app now faces investigations, and in some cases, bans in the U.S. and a number of other countries over privacy and security concerns. Yet the rise of DeepSeek, which built its open source AI model at a fraction of the cost and with fewer chips, also puts China's interests in line with France's. Organizers want the summit to act as a "wake-up call" for France and the wider European tech scene to catch up with AI advances, which have been led by the U.S. and China. Macron hopes to make room for others, including French startup Mistral, which also uses an open source AI model. "DeepSeek is being seen as a kind of vindication of this idea that you don't have to necessarily invest hundreds of billions of dollars in in chips and data centers," Reiners said. Transatlantic tensions Another showdown could involve Brussels, which has long been a thorn in the side of U.S.-based Big Tech companies, cracking down with antitrust penalties against the likes of Google, Apple and Meta. Trump lashed out at last month's World Economic Forum with "very big complaints" about the EU's multibillion-dollar fines, calling them a tax on American companies. More recently, the EU's artificial intelligence regulation has met resistance from the companies. The European Union recently unveiled a non-binding "code of practice" for its AI Act but Meta's top lobbyist said the company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, won't sign up. The EU guidelines, intended to standardize how the AI Act's regulations are applied across the 27-nation bloc, are "unworkable" and the continent's regulatory environment is "pushing Europe to the sidelines," Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan told a Brussels event. -- -- Chan reported from London. AP writer John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report. Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

World leaders set to vie for AI domination at Paris summit

That might be what's on the official agenda of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, but there is something else that's breathing fire into this particular talking shop: DeepSeek. A horse racing fan once told me that the night before a big race, everyone's a winner. And with China dramatically blowing the AI competition in a new direction with DeepSeek, its super-efficient and super-viral AI assistant, suddenly there's a feeling ahead of the summit that the pole position occupied by the US AI sector, despite its vast wealth and AI infrastructure, might not be quite so out-of-reach after all. Prof Gina Neff, from the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge, says there is currently "a vacuum for global leadership on AI". Prof Dame Wendy Hall, from Southampton University, agrees. "DeepSeek made everybody realise that China is a force to be reckoned with," says the computer scientist. "We don't have to just go along with what the big companies on the West Coast are saying. We need global dialogue." On that front, the timing of the summit could not be better. Europe also spies an opportunity to make a new bid for the AI crown. One of French President Emmanuel Macron's officials described the summit to journalists as a "wake up call" for France and Europe, adding that the bloc must not let the AI revolution "pass it by". Other countries also recognise a potential shifting of AI power in the air. India PM Narendra Modi has confirmed his attendance at this summit - having not come to previous gatherings. The US is sending some serious firepower as a defensive signal of its own, including Vice President JD Vance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Google's Sundar Pichai. Elon Musk is notably absent from the official guest list, but he will undoubtedly have something to say about it all, whether he's there in person or not. British Prime Minister Kier Starmer is also reportedly staying away.

Everything to know about the Paris AI summit

From who is there to what will be discussed, Euronews Next takes a look at what can be expected. Government and tech leaders will descend on the French capital on Monday for a highly anticipated two-day artificial intelligence (AI) summit. Set in Paris's 125-year-old Grand Palais, France will host big-name tech bosses such as OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman and world leaders including US Vice President JD Vance. While there are several set themes for the summit, one of the main talking points will be the Chinese AI company DeepSeek, which rattled the AI bubble by releasing what it said was a foundational model that is cheaper and more energy efficient. The summit will provide a global stage for France to show off its AI ambitions, with President Emmanuel Macron saying last year that he wanted the city of light to become the city of AI. Euronews Next takes a look at what to expect. The tech heavyweights in attendance also include Google's Sundar Pichai; Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei; the so-called "Godmother of AI" Dr Fei-Fei Li; one of the "Godfathers of AI" Yann LeCun; and Arthur Mensch, the CEO of French AI champion Mistral AI. It is unclear if DeepSeek's CEO Liang Wenfeng will be attending. Companies such as Nvidia, Mozilla, IBM and others will also attend the summit. As for world leaders, the EU's technological sovereignty chief Henna Virkkunen will be attending, as well as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is rumoured that one of China's most senior leaders Ding Xuexiang could also be attending. Unlike the AI Safety Summit in the United Kingdom, the French AI summit, officially called the AI Action Summit, will not focus as much on the doom and gloom of AI, French officials told Euronews Next last year. Instead, it aims to look at the opportunities of AI, such as for treating diseases or making life easier for humans. Official themes include AI for public interest, global AI governance, the future of work, and innovation and culture. There will also be a focus on sustainability. Open source AI technology will be a key theme, following DeepSeek's success in this way of working. "Foremost in my mind is not to repeat what I see as the mistakes that we made with social media in the late 2000s and early 2010s," said Martin Tisné, thematic envoy for public interest AI at the AI Action Summit "Right now we have a chance, when the AI market is very fluid, to really start from ground zero," he told a press conference on Thursday. "AI is at an inflexion point where it could go two ways. Either a focus around more proprietary models, or an open approach focused around open models - which I think looks very different in terms of competition between companies, and the involvement of society writ large," he said. While the world will be watching as China and the US have both made massive investments in developing AI technology in what is looking like a global AI race, there will also be a focus on the path Europe will take. According to Daron Acemoglu, an institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Nobel Prize-winning economist, the European approach to AI will become much more successful through demonstration which is not just through regulation but through companies that are complying with the rules being at the frontier. "OpenAI or Anthropic's path is not the only one," he told a press conference on Thursday. "There is a path that is more pro-human, pro-worker - more concerned with safety, privacy, and usability - without concentrating all the power, data, and compute resources in the hands of just a few players". Regulation is expected to be a strong talking point as the first provisions of the EU AI Act came into force on February 2, which includes measures such as banning social scoring, internet or CCTV material scraping for facial recognition databases, and harmful AI-based manipulation. As the EU's rules slowly enter into force, by August transparency obligations for AI models from companies such as ChatGPT will start applying, which will call for more disclosure of training data. "Navigating our regulations here [in Europe] just feels like solving a puzzle where the pieces are changing," Tanuja Randery, managing director for Amazon Web Services (AWS) Europe told Euronews Next. She said this is one of the challenges for European businesses that are using AI. Some 3 million European businesses are using AI technology, according to a report released on Saturday by AWS. It is a figure which is on track to meet Europe's digital ambitions, as set out in the European Commission's Digital Decade initiative. However, AWS warned that there are factors that the bloc must improve upon if Europe wants to make the most of AI technology. "The problem is not the technology, it's the lack of digital skills," Randery said.

AI summit in Paris brings together Big Tech and U.S. VP Vance

Major world leaders are meeting for an AI summit in Paris, where challenging diplomatic talks are expected as tech titans fight for dominance in the fast-moving technology industry. Heads of state, top government officials, CEOs and scientists from around 100 countries are participating in the two-day international summit from Monday. High-profile attendees include U.S. Vice President JD Vance, on his first overseas trip since taking office, and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing. "We're living a technology and scientific revolution we've rarely seen," French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday on national television France 2. France and Europe must seize the opportunity because AI "will enable us to live better, learn better, work better, care better, and it's up to us to put this artificial intelligence at the service of human beings," he said. The summit will give some European leaders a chance to meet Vance for the first time. The 40-year-old vice president was just 18 months into his time as Ohio's junior senator when Donald Trump picked him as his running mate. Vance was joined by his wife Usha and their three children -- Ewan, Vivek, and Mirabel -- for the trip to Europe. They were greeted in France on Monday morning by Manuel Valls, the minister for Overseas France, and the U.S. Embassy's charge d'affaires, David McCawley. Before the trip, Vance made it clear that he intended to use the opportunity for frank discussions with European allies. "At the AI Summit, the main reason I'm going is actually to have some private conversations with the world leaders who are also going to be there," Vance told Breitbart News. "I think there's a lot that some of the leaders who are present at the AI summit could do to, frankly -- bring the Russia-Ukraine conflict to a close, help us diplomatically there -- and so we're going to be focused on those meetings in France." On Tuesday, Vance will have a working lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron, with discussions on Ukraine and the Middle East on the agenda. Vance, like the U.S. president, has questioned U.S. spending on Ukraine and the broader approach to isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Within six months of taking office, Trump promised to end the fighting. Vance also addressed what he views as a concerning trend in Europe regarding free speech, a topic he raised last year during his attendance at the Munich Security Conference. "Unfortunately, you've seen in Europe a really significant, and I think, frankly, an evil trend towards censorship," he said. "And you hear a lot about America's moral leadership. One of the things that America's moral leadership is going to be about during President Trump's term is free speech. We want people to be able to speak their minds, and we believe that free and open debate is actually a good thing. Unfortunately, a lot of our European friends have gone the wrong direction there." Later this week, Vance will attend the Munich Security Conference again, where he may meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He plans to revisit themes he raised last year, including the need for NATO allies to take on a greater share of responsibility. Leaders in Europe have been carefully watching Trump's recent statements on threats to impose tariffs on the European Union, take control of Greenland and his suggestion that Palestinians clear out of Gaza once the fighting in the Israel-Hamas conflict ends -- an idea that's been flatly rejected by Arab allies. The summit, which gathers major players such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, aims at fostering AI advances in sectors like health, education, environment, and culture. A global public-private partnership named "Current AI" will be launched to support large-scale initiatives that serve the general interest. The Paris summit "is the first time we'll have had such a broad international discussion in one place on the future of AI," said Linda Griffin, vice president of public policy at Mozilla. "I see it as a norm-setting moment." Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, noted an opportunity to shape AI governance in a new direction by "moving away from this concentration of power amongst a handful of private actors and building this public interest AI instead." However, it remains unclear if the United States will support such initiatives. "There's a lot of complicated questions to resolve" around issues like the ability to control AI systems, Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis, founder of Google's DeepMind research lab, said. "But also I think even more complicated are maybe the geopolitical questions about things like regulation." French organizers are also looking for the summit to ignite major investment announcements in Europe, positioning the region as a viable contender in an industry increasingly shaped by a growing U.S.-China rivalry. France plans to announce AI private investments worth a total of 109 billion euros ($113 billion) over the coming years, Macron said, presenting it as "the equivalent" of Trump's Stargate AI data centers project. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun expressed opposition Monday to any moves to restrict access to AI tools. The release of DeepSeek has prompted calls in the U.S. Congress to limit its use for security reasons. "We oppose drawing ideological lines and oppose overstretching national security concepts and politicizing economic and trade issues," Guo said. He said that China advocates for open-source AI technology and promotes the accessibility of AI services to share the benefits of artificial intelligence with all countries.

Trump's AI ambition and China's DeepSeek overshadow an AI summit in Paris

"Trump is against the very idea of global governance," Reiners said. "It's one thing to get countries to agree that AI should have guardrails and that AI safety is something worth caring about. But they've widened the scope to talk about the future of work and the environment and inclusivity and so on -- a whole range of concepts. So it's hard to imagine getting a widespread agreement on such a broad range of subjects." Chinese leader Xi is sending Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, who's been elevated to the role of Xi's special representative. It's a big step up from the 2023 Bletchley meeting, when the Chinese government sent the vice minister of science and technology. It signifies that Xi wants China to play a bigger role in global AI governance as Trump pulls back, Reiners said. DeepSeek 's release last month stunned the world because of its ability to rival Western players like ChatGPT. It also escalated the wider geopolitical showdown between Beijing and Washington over tech supremacy. Trump said DeepSeek was a "wake-up call" for the U.S. tech industry and his AI advisor David Sacks accused DeepSeek of training its model on stolen OpenAI data. The DeepSeek chatbot app now faces investigations, and in some cases, bans in the U.S. and a number of other countries over privacy and security concerns. Yet the rise of DeepSeek, which built its open source AI model at a fraction of the cost and with fewer chips, also puts China's interests in line with France's. French organizers said "the summit aims at promoting an ambitious French and European AI strategy" as advances in the sector have been led by the U.S. and China. Macron hopes to make room for others, including French startup Mistral, which also uses an open source AI model. "DeepSeek is being seen as a kind of vindication of this idea that you don't have to necessarily invest hundreds of billions of dollars in in chips and data centers," Reiners said.

Emmanuel Macron pitches lighter regulation to fuel AI boom in Europe

An artificial intelligence race is heating up between the United States and China -- but don't count Europe out. That was the pitch that President Emmanuel Macron of France made on Monday as Paris hosted an AI summit, where government leaders, top tech executives and academic experts have gathered to discuss the hopes surrounding AI, as well as the fears of economic and societal disruption that the rapidly evolving technology has fuelled. "We are back in the race," Macron said under the soaring steel and glass roof of the Grand Palais, the exhibition hall where France and India have teamed up to hold the summit. Macron said it was crucial to develop artificial intelligence that was "at the service of humanity" and regulated to guard from dangerous pitfalls. But he also urged Europe to cut red tape, foster more AI startups and invest in computing abilities. Attendees at the summit, which runs through Tuesday, include Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI; Zhang Guoqing, China's vice premier; and Vice President JD Vance, who is on his first trip overseas. Christy Hoffman, the general secretary of the UNI Global Union, said that "there is a risk of AI turning into another engine of inequality, and people are concerned that it will further reduce their autonomy or replace them altogether." But the global mood has shifted as AI becomes widespread and countries jostle to build the technology's next giant. Last month, President Donald Trump announced the so-called Stargate initiative, which could eventually invest as much as $500 billion over the next four years in computing infrastructure to power AI. And China shocked the tech world with DeepSeek, a company that developed powerful artificial intelligence at a fraction of the cost of its American counterparts. Macron's priority is ensuring that Europe does not fall behind the United States and China by overregulating its development. "If we regulate before we innovate, we won't have any innovation of our own," Macron told France 2 television on Sunday. Macron announced more than 100 billion euros in AI-related investments in France during the summit, including a deal with the United Arab Emirates to fund an AI data centre and campus in France.

Macron touts Europe and trolls Trump at Paris AI summit

'Choose Europe and France for AI,' says president amid speculation US and UK playing hardball over declaration Emmanuel Macron touted Europe and France as artificial intelligence powerhouses, amid speculation that the US and UK are playing hardball over a diplomatic declaration at the Paris AI summit. The French president told investors and tech companies attending the summit to "choose Europe and France for AI" as he teased his US counterpart Donald Trump over his swing towards fossil fuels. Referring to the vast energy consumption needed by AI, Macron said France stood out due to its reliance on nuclear energy. Trump said in his inauguration address that the US will "drill, baby, drill" for oil and gas under his leadership. "I have a good friend on the other side of the ocean saying 'drill, baby, drill.' Here, there is no need to drill. It's plug, baby, plug. Electricity is available," he said on Monday. Macron added that a European AI strategy, to be unveiled by the European Commission, president Ursula von der Leyen, on Tuesday, would be a "unique opportunity for Europe to accelerate" in the technology. "We have to provide a bigger domestic market to all the startups when they start as Europeans," he said. Criticism of a draft communique threatened to overshadow the summit's final day on Tuesday, when Macron will be joined by von der Leyen as well as the US vice-president, JD Vance, and the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi. Keir Starmer is not attending. With the US reportedly unhappy about the wording, which includes phrases such as "sustainable and inclusive AI", Politico reported on Monday that the UK was also minded not to sign the communique. Speaking in Paris, the UK tech secretary, Peter Kyle, said the government was "in negotiations" over the statement but "that's something we don't comment on while the negotiations unfold". A government source said they hoped the negotiations would get to a place over the course of the summit where the UK could sign the declaration and said there was still a considerable amount of time left to have those discussions. But the source suggested that the UK was prepared to walk away, saying the joint declaration had to be "squarely in British interests" or it would not get its backing. "We always want to get to a place of agreement but it needs to work for the UK," they said. The draft statement, seen by the Guardian, also refers to AI technology that is "human rights based, human-centric, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy". It places much less emphasis on safety than the declaration at the inaugural AI summit, held in the UK in 2023, which pointed to the technology's potential to cause "catastrophic" harm. Max Tegmark, a leading voice in AI safety, urged countries to shun the statement if it was not amended, saying that its lack of focus on risks from powerful AI systems was a "recipe for disaster". The Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent research body focused on data and AI, also said the draft's failure to emphasise safety "fails to build on the mission of making AI safe and trustworthy, and the safety commitments of previous summits". The opening day of the summit heard warnings about AI's impact on the environment and inequality, as political leaders, tech executives, experts and civil society figures gathered at the Grand Palais in the heart of French capital. Macron's AI envoy, Anne Bouverot, opened the two-day gathering with a speech referring to the environmental impact of AI, which requires vast amounts of energy and resource to develop and operate. "We know that AI can help mitigate climate change, but we also know that its current trajectory is unsustainable," Bouverot said, adding that sustainable development of the technology would be on the agenda. The general secretary of the UNI Global Union, Christy Hoffman, said that without worker involvement in the use of AI, the technology risked increasing inequality. The UNI represents about 20 million workers worldwide in industries including retail, finance and entertainment. "Without worker representation, AI-driven productivity gains risk turning the technology into yet another engine of inequality, further straining our democracies," she told attenders. On Sunday, Macron promoted the event by posting a montage of deepfake images of himself on Instagram, including a video of "him" dancing in a disco with various 1980s hairstyles, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the technology's capabilities.

Paris AI summit forecast: more talk than action

Why it matters: With perhaps only a couple of years left before the tech industry delivers super-powerful AI -- sometimes called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) -- society has precious little time to prepare for its many impacts. Driving the news: Organized by the governments of France and India, the AI Action Summit is bringing together dozens of heads of state and top executives from OpenAI, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Anthropic as well as representatives from academia and nonprofits. One hoped-for outcome was a communique to be agreed upon by as many nations as possible. A couple of other tangible efforts are proceeding as planned. Between the lines: While action stemming from the summit may be limited, there are still benefits to gathering the key stakeholders, notably including government officials from both China and the U.S., whose delegation is led by Vice President JD Vance. Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis, in an interview with Axios, said that a lack of international cooperation around AI norms and standards heightens international risks -- particularly, that countries racing to bar other nations from gaining a technological edge could make choices harmful to humanity as a whole. Zoom in: Officials from government, business, academia and civil society gathered at a number of side events on Sunday to discuss current efforts.

Trump's AI ambition and China's DeepSeek overshadow an AI summit in Paris

President Donald Trump shakes hands with China's President Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019. AP-Yonhap The geopolitics of artificial intelligence (AI) will be in focus at a major summit in France where world leaders, executives and experts will hammer out pledges on guiding the development of the rapidly advancing technology. It's the latest in a series of global dialogues around AI governance, but one that comes at a fresh inflection point as China's buzzy and budget-friendly DeepSeek chatbot shakes up the industry. U.S. Vice President JD Vance -- making his first trip abroad since taking office -- will attend the Paris AI Action Summit starting Feb. 10, while China's President Xi Jinping will be sending his special envoy, signaling high stakes for the meeting. Heads of state and top government officials, tech bosses and researchers are gathering in Paris for the two-day summit co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The event aims to address how to harness AI's potential so that it benefits everyone, while containing the technology's myriad risks. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is attending, along with officials and CEOs from 80 countries, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who attended the inaugural 2023 summit at former codebreaking base Bletchley Park in England, and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng have been invited, but it's unclear if either will attend. Panel talks and workshops at the Grand Palais venue on Monday will be followed by a dinner at the Elysee presidential palace for world leaders and CEOs. Leaders and company bosses are expected to give speeches at Tuesday's closing session. More than two years after ChatGPT's debut, generative AI continues to make astounding advances at breakneck speed. The technology that powers all-purpose chatbots is transforming many aspects of life with its ability to spit out high-quality text, images or video, or carry out complex tasks. The 2023 summit in the U.K. resulted in a non-binding pledge by 28 nations to tackle AI risks. A follow-up meeting hosted by South Korea last year secured another pledge to set up a network of public AI safety institutes to advance research and testing. AI safety is still on the agenda in Paris, with an expert group reporting back on general purpose AI's possible extreme dangers. The Chinese app DeepSeek and ChatGPT applications on a mobile device / EPA-Yonhap But this time organizers are expanding the discussion to more countries, and widening the debate to a range of other AI-related topics. Like previous editions, this summit won't produce any binding regulation. "The summit comes at a time when many are trying to position themselves in the international competition," Macron told reporters, according to La Provence newspaper. "It's about establishing the rules of the game. AI cannot be the Wild West." Organizers are working on getting countries to sign a joint political declaration gathering commitments for more ethical, democratic and environmentally sustainable AI, according to Macron's office. But it's unclear whether the U.S. would agree to such a measure. Another big goal is securing an agreement for a public-interest partnership for AI. Paris seeks to raise 2.5 billion euros ($2.6 billion) for the public-private partnership involving governments, businesses and philanthropic groups that will provide open-source access to databases, software and other tools for "trusted" AI actors, Macron's office said. Macron's team wants to shift the focus away from the race to develop better-than-human AI through sheer computing power and, instead, open up access to data that can help AI solve problems like cancer or long COVID. "We now have this incredible opportunity to figure out not only how we should mitigate the potential harms from artificial intelligence, but also how we can ensure that it's used to improve people's lives," said Martin Tisné, the summit's envoy for public interest AI. U.S. President Donald Trump has spoken of his desire to make the U.S. the "world capital of artificial intelligence" by tapping its oil and gas reserves to feed the energy-hungry technology. Meanwhile, he has moved to withdraw the U.S. -- again -- from the Paris climate agreement and revoked former President Joe Biden's executive order for AI guardrails. Trump is replacing it with his own AI policy designed to maintain America's global leadership by reducing regulatory barriers and building AI systems free of "ideological bias." The U.S. position might undermine any joint communique, said Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at the Eurasia Group. "Trump is against the very idea of global governance," Reiners said. "It's one thing to get countries to agree that AI should have guardrails and that AI safety is something worth caring about. But they've widened the scope to talk about the future of work and the environment and inclusivity and so on -- a whole range of concepts. So it's hard to imagine getting a widespread agreement on such a broad range of subjects." Chinese leader Xi is sending Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, who's been elevated to the role of Xi's special representative. It's a big step up from the 2023 Bletchley meeting, when the Chinese government sent the vice minister of science and technology. It signifies that Xi wants China to play a bigger role in global AI governance as Trump pulls back, Reiners said. French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a meeting with members of the artificial intelligence sector as part of a summit on artificial intelligence at the Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris, France, May 21, 2024. AFP-Yonhap DeepSeek's release last month stunned the world because of its ability to rival Western players like ChatGPT. It also escalated the wider geopolitical showdown between Beijing and Washington over tech supremacy. Trump said DeepSeek was a "wake-up call" for the U.S. tech industry and his AI advisor David Sacks accused DeepSeek of training its model on stolen OpenAI data. The DeepSeek chatbot app now faces investigations, and in some cases, bans in the U.S. and a number of other countries over privacy and security concerns. Yet the rise of DeepSeek, which built its open source AI model at a fraction of the cost and with fewer chips, also puts China's interests in line with France's. French organizers said, "the summit aims at promoting an ambitious French and European AI strategy" as advances in the sector have been led by the U.S. and China. Macron hopes to make room for others, including French startup Mistral, which also uses an open source AI model. "DeepSeek is being seen as a kind of vindication of this idea that you don't have to necessarily invest hundreds of billions of dollars in chips and data centers," Reiners said. Another showdown could involve Brussels, which has long been a thorn in the side of U.S.-based Big Tech companies, cracking down with antitrust penalties against the likes of Google, Apple and Meta. Trump lashed out at last month's World Economic Forum with "very big complaints" about the EU's multibillion-dollar fines, calling them a tax on American companies. More recently, the EU's artificial intelligence regulation has met resistance from the companies. The European Union recently unveiled a non-binding "code of practice" for its AI Act but Meta's top lobbyist said the company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, won't sign up. The EU guidelines, intended to standardize how the AI Act's regulations are applied across the 27-nation bloc, are "unworkable" and the continent's regulatory environment is "pushing Europe to the sidelines," Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan told a Brussels event. (AP)

Paris AI summit to kick off with PM Modi as co-chair, govt chiefs and tech leaders gather

Political and tech industry leaders were set to descend on Paris Monday 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. - 'Stargate' sets the pace - In a TV interview, he trailed "109 billion euros ($113 billion) of investment in artificial intelligence in the coming years" in France.Political and tech industry leaders were set to descend on Paris Monday 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. Monday's meeting of around 1,500 guests in the French capital's opulent Grand Palais will feature lectures and panel discussions outlining the promises of and challenges posed by AI, from around 9:30 am (0830 GMT). Political leaders, including US 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 Sunday trumpeted the benefits of artificial intelligence and French efforts in the field. - 'Stargate' sets the pace - 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. Sunday's 109-billion-euro figure was "the equivalent for France of what the US has announced with 'Stargate'," the $500-billion US programme 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. These vast buildings concentrate in one place the data storage and processing power needed to develop and run the most advanced AI models. "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. - Global governance puzzle - Away from the investment grandstanding, a group of countries, companies and philanthropic organisations said Sunday 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". "We've seen the harms of unchecked tech development and the transformative potential it holds when aligned with the public interest," Current AI founder Martin Tisne said. On Tuesday, 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. tgb-dax-kf/jj/lb

France seeks AI boom, urges EU investment in the sector

French President Emmanuel Macron wants Europe to become a leader in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, he told a global summit of AI and political leaders in Paris Monday where he announced that France's private sector has invested nearly $113 billion in French AI. Financial investment is key to achieving the goal of Europe as an AI hub, Macron said in his remarks delivered in English at the Grand Palais. He said the European bloc would also need to "adopt the Notre Dame strategy," a reference to the lightning swift rebuilding of France's famed Notre Dame cathedral in five years after a devastating 2019 fire, the result of simplified regulations and adherence to timelines. "We showed the rest of the of the world that when we commit to a clear timeline, we can deliver," the French leader said. Henna Virkkunen, the European Union's digital head, indicated that the EU is in agreement with simplifying regulations. The EU approved the AI Act last year, the world's first extensive set of rules designed to regulate technology. European countries want to ensure that they have a stake in the tech race against an aggressive U.S. and other emerging challengers. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen is scheduled to address the EU's ability to compete in the tech world Tuesday. Macron's announcement that the French private sector will invest heavily in AI "reassured" Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, a U.S. company with French co-founders that is a hub for open-source AI, that there will be "ambitious" projects in France, according to Reuters. Sundar Pichai, Google's head, told the gathering that the shift to AI will be "the biggest of our lifetimes." However, such a big shift also comes with problems for the AI community. France had wanted the summit to adopt a non-binding text that AI would be inclusive and sustainable. "We have the chance to democratize access [to a new technology] from the start," Pichai told the summit. Whether the U.S. will agree to that initiative is uncertain, considering the U.S. government's recent moves to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. U.S. Vice President JD Vance is attending the summit and expected to deliver a speech on Tuesday. Other politicians expected Tuesday at the plenary session are Chinese Vice Premier Zhan Guoqing and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. About 100 politicians are expected. There are also other considerations with a shift to AI. The World Trade Organization says its calculations indicate that a "near universal adoption of AI ... could increase trade by up to 14 percentage points" from what it is now but cautions that global "fragmentation" of regulations on AI technology and data flow could bring about the contraction of both trade and output. A somewhat frightening side effect of AI technology is that it can replace the need for humans in some sectors. International Labor Organization leader Gilbert Houngbo told the summit Monday that the jobs that AI can do, such as clerical work, are disproportionately held by women. According to current statistics, that development would likely widen the gender pay gap.

What to expect from the AI Action Summit in Paris

This content is contributed or sourced from third parties but has been subject to Finextra editorial review. On 10 and 11 February 2025, France will host global heads of state and government, CEOs, academics, and many more in Paris at the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Summit. For two days, these AI leaders will discuss five main themes, including: What is the Paris AI Action Summit? This year's AI Summit will be the third of its kind. The inaugural AI Summit was hosted by the UK in November 2023 at the historic Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes, where Alan Turing and a group of codebreakers cracked the Enigma code during World War II. The second AI Summit was hosted in Seoul, South Korea, in May 2024. While the first AI Summit in the UK was borne of the wish to maximise the benefits of AI while minimising the risks attached, a lot has happened over the last two years. New innovations - with China's DeepSeek being the latest one - have disrupted the market, and dozens of global elections have since shaken up many countries' approach to AI. According to the Summit's website, the event will bring together almost 100 countries and more than a thousand global private sector and civil society representatives, who have been invited on an inclusive basis in recognition of their commitment to actively contribute to the AI debate. France's president Emmanuel Macron will be present as host of the event, and prime minister Narendra Modi will be travelling to France as India is co-chairing the Paris AI Action Summit. Other reported attendees include vice president JD Vance of the US, and vice premier Ding Xuexiang of China. Notable chief executives attending include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Elon Musk will reportedly not attend, and the BBC reports British prime minister Kier Starmer is also not likely to be traveling to Paris. What to expect from the AI Action Summit? While the first two summits led through some notable successes of global collaboration - for example the US and China signing a joint declaration on AI safety - this year's summit is set to prove more challenging for finding common ground. Tensions are rising between the US and China, not least because of Trump's newly imposed tariff on Chinese goods. Similarly, China's release of DeepSeek has severely disrupted the AI sphere by challenging the supposed US command of AI innovation. In the BBC, Dame Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at Southampton University, commented: "DeepSeek made everybody realise that China is a force to be reckoned with. We don't have to just go along with what the big companies on the West Coast are saying. We need global dialogue." The stakes on leadership in the global AI race are high - with China's DeepSeek, Trump's $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure and removal of executive orders on addressing AI risk, and Europe's bid to not fall behind. One of Macron's officials describes the AI Action Summit as a 'wake up call' for Europe so as not to let the AI revolution pass by. Considering the global geopolitical landscape and the recent developments in the AI space, France's AI Action Summit could not come at a more convenient time. It remains to be seen how much collaboration and agreement can be achieved between global leaders.

Paris AI summit next week will be the test for US, China cooperation

As world leaders gather in France next week for the AI Action Summit over February 10-11, all eyes will be on President Trump to see whether the United States and China can find some common ground on the matter of AI governance. With nearly 100 nations in attendance, the event focuses on the safe development of artificial intelligence, with focus areas covering everything from labor disruptions to national sovereignty, global AI governance, and open-source AI. (Credit: Adobe / Stock) However, the real test will be whether the US and China can bridge the growing gap created by the AI arms race. With tensions rising in Washington over AI leadership and national security, stakeholders from tech companies including Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI are also slated to attend. It remains unclear whether DeepSeek CEO Lian Wenfeng will be present, though the company's rapid rise is certain to be a major talking point. Beyond geopolitical tensions, funding for AI development is expected to be a likely outcome of the summit, with philanthropies and businesses expected to commit $2.5 billion over five years to public-interest AI projects. Creating new AI regulation is also not on the agenda; rather, the focus will be on refining existing frameworks. Clean energy will also be a focus, given the inevitable power consumption associated with powering AI models and the push for sustainable solutions. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) The US has not explicitly outlined its stance heading into the summit, but its recent actions signal a focus on AI leadership and national security. On January 30th, the Trump administration ordered a review of export controls on China, indicating the potential for further restrictions on AI chip sales. Just days later, President Trump met with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, emphasizing the need for US leadership in AI as competition from Chinese firms like DeepSeek continues to grow. As AI continues to reshape global markets and shift the balance of power, the Paris AI Summit will be a defining test-determining whether the US and China can cooperate on AI governance or if their rivalry will only deepen further.

Macron urges Europe to simplify its regulations to get back into the AI race | TechCrunch

All eyes were on French President Emmanuel Macron at the end of the first day of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris after he annouunced a €109 billion investment package (around $112 billion at current exchange rates) in the French AI ecosystem on Sunday evening. He reiterated this financial commitment from private partners willing to build data centers in France (mostly) and invest in AI startups (sometimes). According to him, the main reason why international investors are choosing France for their next massive data center project comes down to the country's oversupply of nuclear energy. "I have a good friend on the other side of the ocean saying 'drill, baby, drill.' Here, there is no need to drill, it's just 'plug, baby, plug,'" President Macron said. But he doesn't want to make the AI Action Summit all about France. "For me, this summit is not just the announcement of a lot of investment in France. It's a wake-up call for a European strategy," he said. "Tomorrow, President Van der Leyen will announce the European AI strategy and it will be a very important occasion. But this strategy will be a unique opportunity for Europe to accelerate, to simplify our regulations, to deepen the single market and to invest as well in computing capacities," he added. As the European Union wants to streamline regulation, Macron also seems to back this line of thinking. "It's very clear that we have to synchronize with the rest of the world in terms of transmission, in terms of permitting, in terms of authorization, clinical trials -- I mean, in all the different sectors." Macron also urged European companies to buy from European startups. According to him, most companies in the U.S. and China favor homegrown solutions. But that's rarely the case in Europe, especially when it comes to technology. On Tuesday, global leaders and tech CEOs will unveil a new statement. Many will scrutinize both the content and the list of countries signing the pledge at the end of the summit to see if it's still possible to agree on a list of priorities when it comes to AI regulation.

The AI Action Summit In France: Maintaining The Dialogue On Global AI Regulation

I look forward attending the AI Action Summit in Paris, France, next week. After the two previous summits hosted respectively at Bletchley Park in the UK (November 2023) and in Seoul the Republic of Korea (May 2024), French President Macron has decided to host a new AI Summit co-chaired with India in on February 10 and 11 in Paris, France. Who will attend and what is expected? Forrester has already shared its perspectives on the disruptive nature of GenAI and AI: However, Artificial intelligence (AI) is more than just an industrial and technological revolution. It has the potential to bring about a profound paradigm shift in our societies, in how we relate to knowledge, work, information, culture and even language. Some claim AI is just mathematics and doesn't require any regulation at all. Others consider that the European Commission is killing innovation by regulating AI too tightly. Let's face it: AI is such a complex topic with so many political, societal, and environmental consequences, that it deserves a more nuanced debate. That's what the summit will try to establish - maintaining a dialogue on global governance in an increasingly fragmented world. What to expect? In my opinion, this is first and foremost a diplomatic move that aims at facilitating the convergence of AI governance, generating debate on the impact of AI on societies, and establishing thought leadership on AI latest developments. It is likely no major announcement will be made but what matters here is to create the conditions of a continuous dialogue on AI global regulation. It is also worth noting that 50 innovative AI for Good projects have been selected and will receive support, communication and funding at the AI Action Summit. See the full list here: https://parispeaceforum.org/press-releases/sommet-action-ia-50-projets-innovants-selectionnes/ Last but not least, President's Macron diplomatic move also aims at showcasing France's capabilities and assets in the global AI race to make sure France remains one the leading global destination for foreign investments in artificial intelligence:

Macron unveils plans for €109bn of AI investment in France

Melissa Heikkilä and Leila Abboud in Paris and Antoine Gara in New York French President Emmanuel Macron has announced €109bn worth of investments in artificial intelligence in France over the coming years, as Europe seeks a greater foothold in the fast-growing industry dominated by the US and China. Macron touted the new funding ahead of the AI Action Summit in Paris which starts on Monday, featuring discussions between world leaders and AI executives such as OpenAI's Sam Altman. It come after US President Donald Trump last month hailed a $500bn AI infrastructure project known as Stargate, to be built in America and led by OpenAI and SoftBank. Big technology groups Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have between them lined up $300bn this year for AI-related capital expenditure. Meanwhile, Chinese groups such as DeepSeek are making huge strides in developing competitive and low-cost AI models, while Huawei is investing heavily in building chips that can rival those of market leader Nvidia. Faced with such competition, "Europe and France must accelerate their investments", Macron told France 2 television on Sunday. To that end, France will announce on Monday that companies have agreed to invest €109bn in AI projects in the country in the coming years. "This is the equivalent for France of what the US announced for Stargate," Macron said. The move highlights Macron's determination that France and Europe are part of the global race to develop and commercialise cutting-edge technology. One investment in France will be from the United Arab Emirates, which said last week that it will invest as much as €50bn on a new campus for data centres. Initial financing will come from Abu Dhabi's MGX fund, a $100bn investment vehicle also involved in Stargate, while a consortium of French companies would join later. On Sunday, Canadian asset manager Brookfield also announced a €20bn investment to support the deployment of AI infrastructure in France. Another outcome of the Paris summit will be the creation of a non-profit investment fund called Current AI that aims to further so-called "public interest AI", such as the creation of privacy-friendly, anonymised healthcare data for AI projects. Some €400mn has been pledged towards a five-year fundraising goal of €2.5bn. European start-ups have long lagged behind their US and Chinese counterparts as they face an uphill battle due to insufficient funding, access to computing power and a lack of clarity on how to apply regulations. For Macron, the summit is a chance to show that France can still wield soft power on big global issues such as AI. He has advocated for Europe to develop its own AI platforms and applications, so as not to rely only on US and Chinese innovations for a technology that will affect so many areas of business, consumers and society. In particular, he has been a cheerleader of Paris-based AI start-up Mistral, one of the only significant builders of a large language model in Europe, with its chief executive Arthur Mensch expected to be a star of the summit for the French. Macron and other leaders, such as co-host India's premier Narendra Modi, are expected to advocate for more "open", shared AI platforms such as those built by Mistral and DeepSeek, as opposed to the closed alternatives made by OpenAI and Google. Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Meta and a prominent French researcher, said US companies with closed models "have a superiority complex that is misplaced", adding: "The open world is catching up with them." Additional reporting by Ivan Levingston in London, Henry Foy and Barbara Moens in Brussels

Macron beats French investment drum ahead of AI summit

French President Emmanuel Macron trumpeted the benefits of artificial intelligence Sunday ahead of a two-day Paris summit on the technology and its potential benefits and pitfalls. Co-hosted with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the summit has a slew of stated aims including "mapping" AI governance around the world, promoting the idea of more ethical, accessible and frugal AI and pushing for European sovereignty over the technology. But announcements ahead of the gathering could have been confused with Macron's annual "Choose France" investor conference, with tens of billions pledged for investment in projects including data centers in the host country.

Macron urges Europe to catch up in AI race

French President Emmanuel Macron is sounding the alarm over Europe's lagging position in the global artificial intelligence race. In a recent interview with CNN, Macron expressed concerns about the continent's limited progress in AI development, acknowledging that Europe is currently "not in the race" and is at risk of becoming a mere consumer of the technology. Macron emphasized the urgency of establishing a robust AI agenda to catch up with global powerhouses like the United States and China. As part of his ongoing efforts, Macron is championing France-based Mistral, a company vying to compete with US tech giants, despite the rise of low-cost Chinese competitors. The French government is also investing in massive infrastructure projects like Europe's largest supercomputer, set to be unveiled by fall 2025, and hopes to make France a global leader in data centers. However, securing adequate financing -- particularly from the United States and Gulf Arab states -- is seen as crucial to these ambitions. Macron's call to action comes at a time when Europe's AI competitiveness is under threat, with potential tariffs looming from the United States and ongoing regulatory challenges within the European Union. For now, it remains to be seen whether Europe can rise to the occasion and position itself as a competitive force in AI development.