‘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 has 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 the 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 resources 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.
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