PARIS (AFP) -- Political and tech industry leaders descended on Paris Monday for a two-day summit on artificial intelligence, hoping to find common ground on the revolutionary technology set to remake business and society across the world.
Co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the summit aims to lay the groundwork for governing the nascent sector, as global powers race to play leading roles in the fast-developing technology.
Monday’s meeting of around 1,500 guests in the French capital’s opulent Grand Palais feature lectures and panel discussions outlining the promises of and challenges posed by AI.
A largely suit-wearing crowd of men and women speaking languages from all over the world gathered under the glass-and-steel dome of the great hall, built for the 1900 Universal Exhibition.
Selected companies, academics and non-profit groups were showing off their work with AI at stands around the cavernous space decked out with screens and geodesic domes.
Two years on from the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, able to respond to all kinds of natural-language prompts, “artificial intelligence fuels both immense hopes and, at times, exaggerated fear,” Macron’s AI envoy Anne Bouverot told guests as she opened the summit.
In a TV interview Sunday, Macron announced “109 billion euros ($113 billion) of investment in artificial intelligence in the coming years” in France.
That was “the equivalent for France of what the U.S. has announced with ‘Stargate’,” the $500-billion U.S. program led by ChatGPT maker OpenAI, he added.
The technical challenges and price of entry for nations hoping to keep abreast in the AI race have become clearer in recent weeks.
Chinese startup DeepSeek stunned Silicon Valley heavyweights with its low-cost, high-performance AI models.
In the United States, President Donald Trump lent the aura of his office to the “Stargate” project to build computing infrastructure such as data centers.
These vast buildings concentrate in one place the data storage and processing power needed to develop and run the most advanced AI models.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen was expected to announce around 10 public supercomputers designed for use by researchers and startups while attending the summit.
On Tuesday, political leaders from around 100 countries will hold a plenary session, with notable attendees including Modi, Vance, Zhang and Von der Leyen.
France hopes governments will agree on voluntary commitments to make AI sustainable and environmentally friendly.
But any agreement may prove elusive between blocs as diverse as the European Union, United States, China and India, each with different priorities in tech development and regulation.