The Paris AI Action Summit, held on the 10th and 11th February 2025, was the third majorinternational gathering dedicated to artificial intelligence (the first two being held in the UK’s Bletchley Park and Seoul).
Key Attendees
Heads of state and government, policymakers, CEOs and many others were present: among them were US VP JD Vance, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, China’s Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. From the private sector, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft President Brad Smith, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Meta President Nick Clegg, AMD CEO Lisa Su, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were in attendance.
Notably, the word “safety” was dropped from the Summit’s name, and replaced with the term Action. This was indicative of a larger shift in tone altogether – the Summit this year focused much less on risk mitigation, and more on opportunity.
The Summit featured five critical themes:
- Public Interest Al
on how Al can be applied in sectors like healthcare & education to benefit all; - Future of Work
on the impact of Al on automation and productivity; - Innovation and Culture
on how Al will transform creative industries; - Trust in Al
on how to build trustworthy, safe, and secure Al; - Global Governance of AI
on developing an international framework of international governance for Al, building on initiatives like GPAI (Global Partnership for Al).
PM’s Address
As co-chair of the Summit, President Macron invited Prime Minister Modi to deliver the opening address. In his speech, the PM advocated for a democratized approach to Al, one that promoted sustainable development (especially for the Global South). He emphasized the importance of high-quality, bias-free data sets in developing trustworthy and transparent Al systems. He provided an example: if asked to generate an image of someone writing with their left hand, Al platforms would be more likely to depict a right-handed writer instead, as the training data is dominated by the latter.
He also highlighted India’s Al Mission, and its efforts to build its own Large Language Model. The Prime Minister also announced that India would be the host of the next Al Summit.
The US & UK Stance
The US and the UK, however, refused to sign the Paris Summit
declaration on Inclusive & Sustainable Al, which highlighted aims of “ensuring Al is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all” and “making Al sustainable for people and the planet”. It had 60 other signatories, notably France, China, India, Japan, Australia and Canada. The UK cited national security and global governance concerns, and stated that the declaration did not go far enough in terms of providing clarity. Keir Starmer was notably absent, but UK Science minister Patrick Vallance stated that “if you over-regulate in fast-moving technologies you kill them.”
US AI Policy
This attitude was echoed by the US Vice-President JD Vance, who stated in his speech that Al is “an opportunity that the Trump administration will not squander.”
He said that U.S. A.I. policy would be built on four pillars: on the maintenance of U.S. AI technology as “the gold standard;” on the approach that excessive regulation could kill innovation and that “pro-growth” Al policies are required; that Al must “remain free from ideological bias, and that American Al will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship;” and that workers will be consulted on Al policy and that the Trump Administration will “maintain a pro-worker growth path for Al” with the belief Al will create more jobs than it displaces. His speech was an example of the ways in which US policy looks markedly different from EU policy: encouraging private-sector-led innovation over government intervention.
Announcements
Macron revealed a 109 billion euro plan for Al investments in France and the European Union unveiled a 200 billion euro plan to speed Al adoption in European industry.
Ursula von der Leyen focused on the sustainability of Al and long term research projects, announcing the intention to create a “CERN for Al” in the European Union.
Australian, Korean, Irish, French and UK data protection authorities signed a joint declaration to reaffirm their commitment to establishing data governance that fosters innovative and privacy-protective Al.
The Summit saw the announcement of a Coalition on Sustainable AI that includes Nvidia, IBM, SAP, Salesforce, and AMD, among 37 other tech companies, 11 countries, and 5 international organizations. The Coalition aims to build momentum for more environmentally sustainable AI. It was spearheaded by France and the UNEP (UN Environment Programme).
