This week’s AI Action Summit in Paris — the artificial intelligence (AI) community’s equivalent of Davos — saw the Europeans act decidedly un-European.
The annual event, which is attended by global heads of state and industry titans, typically focuses on AI safety and regulations. But this year, safety has been eclipsed by talk of cutting red tape, innovating faster and accelerating investments in AI. The shift in mood comes as the EU AI Act, the most sweeping AI regulations in the world, took effect on Feb. 2.
The European Union, with its 27 member states, is investing €200 billion ($207 billion) in AI, according to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU.
“Too often, I hear that Europe is late to the race —– while the U.S. and China have already gotten ahead,” von der Leyen said in a speech Monday (Feb. 10). “I disagree because the AI race is far from over. Truth is, we are only at the beginning. The frontier is constantly moving. And global leadership is still up for grabs.”
In the U.S., President Donald Trump recently announced a $100 billion to $500 billion project called Stargate to build AI infrastructure, which will be funded by the private sector. Meanwhile, last month China reportedly set up a 60 billion yuan ($8.2 billion) AI investment fund, which is a private-public joint venture. Last year, Shanghai launched a 100 billion yuan ($13.8 billion) fund.
Von der Leyen added that while past AI summits have “focused on laying the groundwork for AI safety … this summit is focused on action.”
But the EU’s approach will be distinctly European, she said. The continent will draw on its industrial and scientific heritage to apply AI to complex applications. AI development will also be cooperative, bringing together different countries, sectors and backgrounds. Third, Europe will focus on offering open-source AI systems, which “can spread much faster” while also developing proprietary systems. U.S. AI models are mostly proprietary closed models, like ones from OpenAI and Google.
Von der Leyen laid out the EU’s plan:
- EU will add €50 billion ($51.7 billion) to the private sector’s €150 billion ($155 billion) investment in AI, the largest public-private partnership in the world.
- Europe will accelerate innovation using the continent’s public supercomputers, which are some of the world’s fastest.
- EU will develop AI gigafactories, which are “very large” data and computing infrastructures to train “very large” models.
France to ‘Invest, Invest, Invest’
In advance of the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France will invest €109 billion ($112 billion) in AI projects over the next few years, according to a television interview with TF1, the nation’s public broadcast service. (France and India are co-hosting the summit.)
“This is a moment of opportunity by humanity,” Macron said. That means France has to “invest, invest, invest” in AI.
Macron, who compared France’s investment to Stargate in the U.S., said funds will come from French companies, American and Canadian investment funds as well as from the United Arab Emirates. The UAE is investing between €30 billion and €50 billion ($31 billion to $52 billion) to build Europe’s largest AI data center, in France.
At the summit, Macron urged Europe and France to reduce red tape for AI projects to stay in the AI race, according to Le Monde.
He added that France will adopt the “Notre Dame de Paris strategy” for AI development and application. The famous cathedral burned in 2019 and was rebuilt in five years. “We showed the rest of the world that when we commit to a clear timeline, we can deliver,” he said.
Macron also pointed to France’s base of decades-old nuclear power plants as a key advantage to providing clean energy to support power-hungry AI.
“I have a good friend in the other part of the ocean saying ‘drill, baby, drill,’” Macron told the newspaper, quoting Trump’s pro-fossil fuels policy. “Here, there is no need to drill. It’s plug, baby, plug.” he said.
US, UK Won’t Sign AI Declaration
The U.S. and U.K. declined to sign an international agreement on AI, according to the BBC.
At the summit, France, China and India are among 60 countries that have signed a pledge to ensure AI is “open,” “inclusive” and “ethical.” Another priority is to make AI sustainable for “people and planet.”
But JD Vance, the U.S. vice president who represented America at the summit, said in a speech that too much regulation of AI could “kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off.”
A spokesperson for the U.K. government said the declaration “didn’t provide enough clarity” on global governance and also did not “sufficiently address harder questions around national security” risks that AI poses.
Tim Flagg, CEO of UKAI, a trade group representing the U.K.’s AI industry, told the BBC that while the group believes that being environmentally responsible in AI is “important, we question how to balance this responsibility with the growing needs of the AI industry for more energy.”
