AI Summit kicks off as France takes charge of EU AI lead

The global AI Summit is kicking off today in Paris, with thousands of experts and leaders gathering to discuss the latest developments and the future of AI. The summit comes at a key moment for AI developments, with the emergence of new players such as the Chinese DeepSeek and Europe struggling to catch up. 

CEOs of AI leaders such as Dario Amodei from Anthropic, Sam Altman from OpenAI, and Demis Hassabis from Google DeepMind are attending the conference. United States Vice President JD Vance and China's Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing are also joining. 

After the first two editions of this global gathering, France is hosting the two-day  gathering. As the US and China lead the AI race, Paris is leading Europe’s attempt to gain relevance in the AI space. French’s Mistral AI introduced its AI assistant, challenging leaders as ChatGPT and Claude with its performance. Moreover, investments are coming to further boost the French AI ecosystem. 

France's push for an AI infrastructure

Yesterday, in an interview on French national TV, president Emmanuel Macron announced €109 billion in AI investments from French and foreign private investors. The growth of the French AI ecosystem has been a priority for president Macron, as it laid out a strategy to create AI champions back in 2023. Meanwhile, the country worked to attract foreign investments, with the selling point of providing clean, stable and cheap power—thanks to extensive nuclear energy supply. 

Macron also stated that France identified 35 new sites for data centers, and investments are starting to come. Last week, the United Arab Emirates pledged between €30 to €50 billion for a data centre project capable of providing one gigawatt of capacity. Canadian fund Brookfield also committed €20 billion for a data centre in Cambrai, in the north of the country. 

As Paris positions as Europe’s lead of AI, Europe struggles to match the scale of US and Chinese infrastructure. The US’s Stargate AI infrastructure project, for instance, is committing $500 billion in infrastructure investment. 

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French lead on EU regulamentation

France sees the summit has a chance to showcase the possibilities of AI for Europe. As reported by the Financieele Dagblad, France, the Netherlands, and Germany will introduce during the summit a plan to limit the power of Chinese and American AI companies. 

The proposal wants to bring the AI industry under the scope of the European Digital Markets Act (DMA), a regulation aiming to make the digital economy fairer and more contestable. According to the proponents, the current situation sees American companies having market power. 

Parallel to that, the EU AI Act came into force last week. The regulation set a framework for AI applications based on a multi-level risk approach to protect citizens from the risks derived from the technology. AI systems used for biometric categorization, subliminal manipulation techniques, and emotion recognition, to name a few, are banned altogether. In August, new rules about general-purpose AI systems, including ChatGPT, will also come into effect.

With Paris being the hotspot of AI discussions for two days, France places itself at the forefront of Europe’s attempt to claim a spot in this tense race. The risk of becoming irrelevant is around the corner. 

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