World leaders set to vie for AI domination at Paris summit
2025-02-06
Category: economic

As I write, there are a lot of powerful people around the world preparing to make their way to Paris – and a sense that many of them are holding their breath.On Monday, against the sumptuous backdrop of the city's 125-year-old Grand Palais, representatives from 80 countries including world leaders, tech bosses, academics and other experts, will gather for a two-day global summit to discuss current progress, and future goals, for the rapidly-evolving, hugely-disruptive technology that is artificial intelligence.That might be what's on the official agenda of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, but there is something else that's breathing fire into this particular talking shop: DeepSeek.
A horse racing fan once told me that the night before a big race, everyone's a winner.And with China dramatically blowing the AI competition in a new direction with DeepSeek, its super-efficient and super-viral AI assistant, suddenly there's a feeling ahead of the summit that the pole position occupied by the US AI sector, despite its vast wealth and AI infrastructure, might not be quite so out-of-reach after all.Prof Gina Neff, from the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge, says there is currently "a vacuum for global leadership on AI".Prof Dame Wendy Hall, from Southampton University, agrees. "DeepSeek made everybody realise that China is a force to be reckoned with," says the computer scientist."We don't have to just go along with what the big companies on the West Coast are saying. We need global dialogue."On that front, the timing of the summit could not be better.Europe also spies an opportunity to make a new bid for the AI crown. One of French President Emmanuel Macron's officials described the summit to journalists as a "wake up call" for France and Europe, adding that the bloc must not let the AI revolution "pass it by".Other countries also recognise a potential shifting of AI power in the air. India PM Narendra Modi has confirmed his attendance at this summit – having not come to previous gatherings.The US is sending some serious firepower as a defensive signal of its own, including Vice President JD Vance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Google's Sundar Pichai. Elon Musk is notably absent from the official guest list, but he will undoubtedly have something to say about it all, whether he's there in person or not.British Prime Minister Kier Starmer is also reportedly staying away.
There have been two previous summits, the first held in the UK and the second in South Korea. A lot has happened since the AI world gathered for the first time, on the steps of the historic mansion of Bletchley House, in November 2023, and promised to try to maximise the benefits of AI while minimising the risks. For one thing, half of the global population has been to the polls since then.In Bletchley Park, China's Vice Minister for Science and Technology, Wu Zhaohui attended. But there were whispers that he was kept at arms length, on the grounds of national security.In Paris, by comparison I expect China to be guests of honour. The country is reportedly sending one of its most senior leaders, Ding Xuexiang, a close ally of President Xi JinPing. There's also a buzz around whether DeepSeek creator Liang Wenfeng will join him.I asked ChatGPT to list some of AI's notable milestones since the South Korea summit of May 2024. DeepSeek did not make the cut.Of course there is much more to AI than generative AI like both DeepSeek and ChatGPT - tools that create content like text, images, video. It may well be the most widely accessible to us as consumers. But there are also AI tools that spot disease symptoms, model climate change solutions, develop new formulas for drugs - and that will all be in scope in Paris.
Furthermore, the David v Goliath narrative around which the story of DeepSeek hangs does merit further scrutiny. The boss of AI firm Anthropic, Dario Amodei, has written a compelling blog about whether DeepSeek really was built at a fraction of the cost of its US rivals.We do know that it was built on their shoulders: using a number of Nvidia chips (probably older ones, because of US sanctions) and some opensource AI architecture developed by Meta. In addition, OpenAI has complained that rivals are using its work in order to advance their own (contacts in the creative industries was amused at the irony of this, given that OpenAI products will happily produce output "in the style of" individual human creators).But nonetheless DeepSeek succeeded in shaking up the AI sector in a way not even AI itself might have predicted. And it wiped a lot of money off the value of some of the biggest players in the process. It will almost certainly be a huge topic of conversation all around those Parisian conference rooms.
There's one more theme running through the AI Summit that will be worth keeping an eye on.The first summit had the word "safety" in its title. Some felt the event pushed the narrative too hard and terrified people with dark talk of existential threats.But it hasn't fallen of the agenda entirely.As a subject, AI safety is a rather broad church. It can relate to any number of risks: the generation and spread of misinformation, displays of bias and discrimination against individuals or races, the ongoing development by multiple countries of AI-controlled weapons, the potential for AI to create unstoppable computer viruses.Prof Geoffrey Hinton, often described as one of the Godfathers of AI, says these as "short-term risks". They might be up for discussion in Paris, but he argued on BBC Radio 4's Today programme last week that they are unlikely to garner strong international collaboration in the long term.The big scenario which he believes will really pull everyone together is the prospect of AI becoming more intelligent than humans – and wanting to seize control."Nobody wants AI to take over from people," he says. "The Chinese would much rather the Chinese Communist Party ran the show than AI."Prof Hinton compared this eventuality to the height of the Cold War, when the US and Russia "just about succeeded" in collaborating in order to prevent global nuclear war."There's no hope of stopping [AI development]," he said. "What we've got to do is to try to develop it safely."Prof Max Tegmark, founder of the Future of Life Institute, also share a stark warning. "Either we develop amazing AI that helps humans, or uncontrollable AI that replaces humans," he says."We are unfortunately closer to building AI than to figuring out how to control it."Prof Tegmark hopes the summit will push for binding safety standards "like we have in every other critical industry".