This week’s AI Action Summit in Paris (Davos, the equivalent of the artificial intelligence (AI) community), was clearly European.
The annual events, attended by the Global Heads of national and industrial giants, usually focus on AI safety and regulation. But this year, safety was ingrained by talks of cutting red tape and innovating and accelerating investments in AI faster. Mood changes occur when the world’s most drastic AI regulations, the EU AI Act, comes into effect on February 2nd.
According to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the European Union, along with 27 member states, has invested 200 billion euros ($207 billion) in AI.
“Too often, I hear that Europe is behind race — the US and China are already moving forward,” von der Leyen said. speech Monday (February 10th). “I don’t agree because the AI race is not over. The truth is, we are only first. The frontier is always on the move, and we still have global leadership.”
In the US, President Donald Trump recently announcement The $100-$500 billion project, called Stargate, will build AI infrastructure funded by the private sector. Meanwhile, last month, China reportedly reportedly said setting The 600 billion yuan ($8.2 billion) AI investment fund is a private public joint venture. Last year, Shanghai Release A fund worth 100 billion yuan ($13.8 billion).
Von Der Leyen added that past AI Summits “focused on laying the foundation for AI safety, but this summit focuses on action.”
But she said the EU approach would clearly be European. The continent uses its industrial and scientific heritage to apply AI to complex applications. AI development is also collaborative, linking different countries, sectors and backgrounds. Third, Europe will focus on providing open source AI systems. This “may spread far faster” while developing its own system. Most American AI models, like Openai and Google, are their own closed models.
Von Der Leyen laid out the EU plans.
The EU will add 50 billion euros ($51.7 billion) to its private sector investment of 150 billion euros ($155 billion) in AI, the world’s largest public-private partnership.
Europe accelerates innovation using the world’s fastest continental public supercomputers.
The EU will develop AI GigaFactories, a “very large” data and computing infrastructure, and train “very large” models.
France is “investment, investment, investment”
Before the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron announcement France plans to invest 100 billion euros ($112 billion) in AI projects over the next few years, according to a television interview with TF1, the country’s public broadcasting service. (France and India co-host the summit.)
“This is a moment of opportunity by humanity,” Macron said. In other words, France must “invest, invest, invest” in AI.
Macron, who compared French investments to US Stargate, said the funds also come from French companies, US and Canadian investment funds, as well as the United Arab Emirates. UAE is investment Between 30 billion and 50 billion euros ($31 billion and $52 billion) to build Europe’s largest AI data center in France.
Summit, Macron I was urged According to Le Monde, Europe and France are trying to reduce the deficit to keep AI projects RED tapes in AI races.
He added that France will adopt the Notre-Dame des Paris Strategy for AI development and applications. The famous cathedral burned in 2019 and was rebuilt in five years. “We showed the rest of the world what we could offer when we committed to a clear timeline,” he said.
Macron also pointed out the French decades-old nuclear power plant base as an important advantage in providing clean energy to support electricity-hungry AI.
“I have good friends in the rest of the ocean who say ‘drills, babies, drills,'” Macron told the newspaper, citing Trump’s breeding fuel policy. “There’s no need to drill here. It’s plugs, babes, plugs,” he said.
The US and UK will not sign AI declarations
The United States and the United Kingdom I declined According to the BBC, it will sign an international agreement on AI.
At the summit, France, China and India are among the 60 countries that have signed a pledge to ensure that AI is “open”, “comprehensive” and “ethical.” Another priority is to make AI sustainable for “people and planets.”
However, JD Vance, the US vice president who represented America at the summit, said that too many AI regulations could “have to take off and kill transformative industries.”
A spokesman for the UK government said the declaration “did not provide sufficient clarity” for global governance, and that the risks posed by AI “did not adequately address more difficult questions about national security.” I stated.
Tim Flag, CEO of Ukai, the UK’s leading trading group, told the BBC that the group believes that AI’s environmental responsibility is important, but this responsibility and the growing needs of the AI industry are as well as the growing needs of the AI industry. He said he is questioning how to balance the More energy. ”
