By AFP - Agence France Presse
Conference of scientists kicks off global AI summit in Paris
Mona GUICHARD and Tom BARFIELD
Global experts will debate the threats posed by artificial intelligence (AI) at a meeting in Paris on Thursday and Friday, ahead of a summit of world leaders on fast-evolving technology.
Thousands of people are expected to attend the event to find common ground on a technology that has disrupted many business sectors in less than two years - as well as to keep France and Europe on the map as credible competitors in the AI race.
Paris' ambitions also extend to stimulating citizens' interest in the real-world uses of AI, taking stock of the global governance of the technology, and promoting ethical, accessible, and cost-effective options.
Scientists such as Yann LeCun, head of AI at Facebook owner Meta, will discuss its impact on areas such as work, health, and sustainability from Thursday at the prestigious Polytechnique Engineering School.
The Frenchman, one of the fathers of the current AI wave, and 20 other top researchers dined with Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, the French president's office at the Elysée Palace said.
On Saturday and Sunday, there will be talks on the impact of AI on culture before heads of state and government from around 100 countries and global leaders from the technology sector meet on Monday and Tuesday.
- DeepSeek invited
Among the high-level participants will be US Vice President JD Vance, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will co-host the summit, as Macron seeks to involve the Global South in a technological battle that, for now, is being fought mainly between the United States and China.
Macron's office said he would also receive the leader of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed Bin Zayed al Nahyan, widely known as “MBZ”, on Thursday to discuss “the common ambition of our two countries regarding AI”.
On the business side, Elon Musk, head of X and Tesla, has yet to confirm his attendance, as has Liang Wengfeng, founder of the Chinese startup DeepSeek, which shocked the world with its frugal, high-performance R1 model last week.
American figures such as Sam Altman from OpenAI and Dario Amodei from Anthropic, as well as Arthur Mensch from French AI developer Mistral, will take part in the meeting.
In the field of science, Meta's LeCun will be flanked by Demis Hassabis, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and head of Google's DeepMind AI research lab, and Berkeley machine learning researcher Michael Jordan.
Three other Nobel laureates - computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, journalist Maria Ressa, and economist Joseph Stiglitz - will take part in a conference organized by the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI (IASEI), created only last year.
- French efforts in AI
France hopes the conference will reinforce its position as European leader in AI, having already attracted several labs from leading AI companies to Paris, including Google, Meta, and OpenAI.
The Polytechnique school was chosen to host the scientific conference as a symbol of French excellence in the field.
“This summit should be a moment to position Paris as the global capital of AI,” digital minister Clara Chappaz told AFP journalists.
After a month in which the emergence of DeepSeek shocked even the titans of Silicon Valley and the United States, who announced a $500 billion AI investment scheme, France and Europe have a lot to prove in the coming days.
Paris plans to announce major investments in the billions, including for new data centers on its territory.
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