Macron stresses need for int'l cooperation with US, China on artificial intelligence

By Nur Asena Erturk

The French president on Monday stressed the need for international cooperation, including with the US and China, on artificial intelligence.

Emmanuel Macron told the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit in Paris that he believes in the capacity “together to work in an open world, whatever the geopolitics will be, meaning to work with the US,… to work with China, … India, and the whole world.”

The two-day international summit, co-chaired with India, brings together heads of state and government, tech titans, academics and policymakers from over 80 countries to discuss ethical, political, and economic challenges surrounding AI.

High-profile participants include Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and US Vice President JD Vance, among others.

The president also called on entrepreneurs to choose France and invest there as the country plans to “build new partnerships with American and Asian players in order to manufacture more chips and secure our capacities.”

He said this requires “available spaces and energy,” and France has both.

“We have available land. We worked very hard with local authorities … We identified 35 sites available. And the most important for me, we have low carbon, pilotable available energy. And this is unique, unique if you compare with the rest of the world because we have a model of production based on nuclear energy, which means that more than 75% of our electricity is produced by this nuclear energy,” Macron explained.

The president emphasized that this summit was not just an event to announce investments in France, but “a wake-up call for a European strategy.”

He added that President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen would announce the European AI strategy on Tuesday, “a unique opportunity for Europe to accelerate, to simplify our regulations, to deepen the Single Market.”

“It is very clear that we have to resynchronize with the rest of the world in terms of transmission, in terms of permitting, in terms of authorization, clinical trials,” Macron said, criticizing Europe for being “too slow.”

The French president earlier announced a €109 billion ($112 billion) investment in AI over the coming years.