Paris AI summit draws world leaders and CEOs eager for lighter regulation

By Jeffrey Dastin

World leaders and technology executives are convening in Paris on Monday to discuss how to safely embrace artificial intelligence at a time of mounting resistance to heavy-handed red tape that businesses say stifles innovation.

Eagerness to rein in AI has waned since previous AI summits in Britain and South Korea that focused world powers' attention on technology's risks after ChatGPT's viral launch in 2022.

As U.S. President Donald Trump tears up his predecessor's AI guardrails to promote U.S. competitiveness, pressure has built on EU policymakers to pursue a lighter-touch approach to AI to help keep European firms in the tech race.

Some EU leaders, including summit host French President Emmanuel Macron, and tech companies are hoping flexibility will be applied to the bloc's new AI Act to help homegrown startups.

"There's a risk some decide to have no rules and that's dangerous. But there's also the opposite risk, if Europe gives itself too many rules," Macron told regional French newspapers in an interview published on Friday.

"We should not be afraid of innovation," he said.

Trump's early moves on AI underscored how far the strategies to regulate AI in the United States, China and EU have diverged.

European lawmakers last year approved the bloc's AI Act, the world's first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology. Tech giants and some capitals are pushing for it to be enforced leniently. Brussels is finalising an accompanying code of practice.

Moreover, Trump's brakes-off approach has emboldened the regulation-cautious U.S. Big Tech groups from which Europe needs to seek investment, said British think-tank Chatham House.

Meanwhile, China's DeepSeek challenged U.S. and British AI leadership last month by freely distributing a human-like reasoning system, galvanizing geopolitical and industry rivals to race faster still.

"An unpredictable global scramble to develop AI is underway, as the U.S. turns inward and China boasts new capabilities," Chatham House said.

Trump is not sending the U.S. AI Safety Institute to Paris, in a troubling sign to those hoping for global risk-based rules governing AI.

COMPETITIVENESS

Top political leaders including U.S. Vice President JD Vance and China's Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing will attend the summit. Others on the attendance list are Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Macron is due to meet with Guoqing on Monday and Vance on Tuesday, the Elysee said. The plenary session is on February 11.

Top executives such as Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are slated to give talks as well. Executives will partake in an invitation-only dinner with political leaders on Monday.

Google Senior Vice President James Manyika said at a press reception on Sunday that the opportunities from AI were now in “much greater focus.”

Delegations are also expected to discuss how to manage AI's massive energy needs as the planet gets hotter, as well as AI for the developing world. A non-binding communiqué has been in progress.

Macron is eager to promote France's national industry, with a focus on areas where Europe’s second-largest economy has an advantage: free, “open-source” systems, and clean energy to power data centers.

Ahead of the summit, France struck a deal with the United Arab Emirates for a major AI data center representing investments of up to $50 billion.

Launching a new app with generative AI software, the CEO of Nvidia-backed French startup Mistral told Reuters: "The French and the whole world are realising that European players count and that they provide cutting-edge technology."