At the start of the week, I made my release from the year towards Paris to attend the Summit of Action on AI, which brought together a hundred countries as well as many experts, leaders and researchers around this Subject that I adoooore: artificial intelligence.

You should know that it was not a Franco-French event intended only for self-congratulation but a real international summit co-led by France and India. Few people have spoken about it, but there were before other summits on the AI ​​which in particular dealt with the risk / security subject. In the case of this Parisian summit, it was more focused on sustainable development, innovation and inclusiveness.

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You will understand, it was much more Peace & Love than the previous summits.

In short, I walked around there, at the Royal Palace first then the next day at Station F and I admit that for a tech enthusiast like me, it was a little frustrating, because not very tech as a living room. It was not CES or Vivatech, but rather strategic exchanges, analysis and networking on AI and its impacts.

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Several themes came out of this summit. First of all with regard to investments, there was a big announcement of 109 billion euros in private investments which will be invested in France to support various projects. Sacred Somme, but I’m waiting to see now how it will be distributed, because for the moment, it only talks about Data Center IA.

In any case, it reassured both French / European actors and American actors that France wanted to position itself seriously on the subject. We have missed all the tech revolutions of the last 50 years (internet, web 2.0, blockchain and so on & mldr;) So I sincerely hope that this time it is good and that France will be there.

But hey, whether Macron or AI actors as Arthur Menschco-founder Mistral ai or Sam Altmanthe CEO of Openai, everyone looks fairly in accordance with the fact of leaving “innovation to be done”. What I understand about that is “We want cash, fewer tax pressure and less regulations”. It is true that in Europe and even more in France, we regulate strongly and we anticipate the taxation of all the new sectors / markets which could possibly take root in the country, even before they do it. And often, this discourages companies to come and develop here.

But it remains to be seen now if this rain of billions to support the AI ​​will be enough & mldr; In any case, what I felt there is that there is not really a clearly established plan yet on how we will spend all this money to do the nique to the Americans and the Chinese.

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Of course, it also talked about security and safeguards. Justin Trudeauthe Canadian Prime Minister insisted that AI needed safeguards to serve the general interest and not just a handful of billionaires. Everyone seemed to agree that an open, ethical, respectful of private life was needed. Faced with American black boxes like Openai or Google, I find it quite healthy as will.

The open source seems to be a path seriously considered to maintain AI sovereignty, an opening to serve the general interest and of course boost innovation.

Besides, I am convinced that without this transparency, no confidence and without this confidence, people will reject this AI that TV journalists describe all day long as something bad that will end up killing nature and steal people’s work. And if people stupidly reject this technology as some have rejected the Internet at the start of the internet, well, the delay will be even greater and in the end, we will find ourselves as now at the mercy of the big American tech boxes. Yes, like all tools, AI has its faults, but as with all tools, defects can be corrected / attenuated. It just takes a little time and will.

I think that all the difficulty is therefore to find the right balance between the adoption of technology and the measurement of dangers and problems linked to this technology, that is to say, reconcile Economic growth and climatic imperatives. We cannot go headlong in AI by obscuring the problems of security and ecological impact and one cannot reject everything in block and return to rub flints, remaining under the yoke of foreign technologies (in particular American) . And either we cannot bind our hands with too strong regulations and thus leave the field open to the Chinese / Americans.

This is why I find that the discussions that took place during this summit were quite intelligent and measured. But once again, there was not really a concrete action plan. It may still be a little too early & mldr; Maybe this summit was the beginning of it all and that it will happen in a second step. I don’t know, we’ll see.

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But what is certain is that for having followed what was said then in the media, it is that firstly, the vast majority of them had nothing to do with this summit and have nothing to fuck AI in general. This does not seem to interest the French despite the warnings of people like Xavier Niel who explain that if you are not interested in AI, you will be replaced by the people who were interested in it. A bit like all these traders who never wanted to get started on the internet to sell their products and who today have tragically disappeared. It’s sad, but I quite agree with that.

This is also why I often tell you about it, that I give you tools, tutorials on My YouTube channel& mldr; etc. The idea is to get into it, learn to use it, understand how it works and see how it can integrate intelligently in the context of your job, either to save time or for Bosser better, more intelligently, more effectively & mldr;

Then beyond the fact that the French have nothing to square with AI, there is also a huge fracture in our society. On the one hand, there are pro-innovation leaders like Macron, supported by private companies that advocate a Agile regulations And fewer constraints. And on the other side, there are some experts and activists who wish strict rules To supervise the AI, even if it means slow down its development in Europe.

The whole game of Europe will therefore consist in combining Innovation and regulation for the benefit of citizens. And it will not be easy when opposite, we have Donald and Elon who are freewheeling and who drop the horses to position themselves in first position. In short, the race is launched and maybe we have already lost it? We’ll see, but it’s worth trying, I think.

In the article that will follow, I will tell you about the NGOs and startups that make AI and that I met during these 2 days.


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