Paris (France) (AFP) – France and Germany on Wednesday affirmed their will to work together to secure digital independence, as Europe’s largest tech trade fair Vivatech got underway and transatlantic tensions over AI marked the G7 meeting. French President Emmanuel Macron called for “better regulation” of AI and warned against “non-cooperation between democracies” on the technology, as increasingly capable AI models are released by private developers.
“The American administration made a very serious decision a few days ago. The good thing is, that means a wake-up call: ‘this can be dangerous’,” Macron said in Evian, eastern France, where US President Donald Trump was meeting leaders of other top advanced economies. But he also warned that the “reaction had in a way been strictly nationalist”. “The US and EU need to be strong partners in AI,” European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said. “It is in our mutual interest that our citizens and companies can safely use the best AI models,” von der Leyen added.
AI developer Anthropic’s cutting off access to its most powerful models under pressure from Washington has focused minds across the Atlantic, highlighting the continent’s dependence on its erratic ally. Earlier Wednesday, France and Germany had offered up a “shared vision for strengthening Europe’s digital sovereignty” in a joint statement as Vivatech opened for its 10th anniversary edition.
“We’re making a play for independence, but also for survival,” French digital minister Anne Le Henanff said as she visited alongside German counterpart Karsten Wildberger. “We don’t want to go through what we already have with some other technologies,” Le Henanff added, referring to cloud computing where “as Europeans, we reacted relatively late”. Brussels is already working on draft “buy European” rules.
France’s finance ministry on Wednesday announced a European effort to encourage “major European procurers, private companies, state agencies and ministries” to stick to the bloc’s providers. Germany, Spain, and Belgium backed the proposal. Wednesday’s sovereignty push followed France’s Tuesday announcement that its DGSI domestic intelligence agency would replace American data sifting giant Palantir with local competitor ChapsVision.
“We cannot accept new strategic dependencies in the digital realm,” Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said. But Finance Minister Roland Lescure said it would likely take until next year before the French firm was ready to take over. Leading French AI researcher Yann LeCun said governments were right to pursue sovereign AI, speaking from a Vivatech stage in front of an audience of businesspeople. Sovereignty is “very important, because very soon all of our information diet will be mediated by AI assistants,” LeCun said.
Wednesday’s star guest Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, went off the AI beaten path to tout space as a “dynamic, entrepreneurial place” alongside the rocket firm’s chief Dave Limp and former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino. The disastrous launchpad explosion of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket had been “a gut punch”, Bezos acknowledged, while insisting that “space travel is hard, and it’s worth it”. Other prominent attendees will include Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, expected to walk the Vivatech halls on Thursday.
Vivatech organisers hope to top last year’s attendance record of 180,000 people this year, with the fair opening to the general public on Saturday. Some 15,000 startups are exhibiting in the hope of attracting funding, staff, customers, and buzz.
© 2024 AFP
