By Anne Bouverot
Special to The Times Kuwait
The rapid development of artificial intelligence represents a revolution for our societies, our economies, and our cultures, bringing both profound transformations and a mix of hopes and fears. There is great hope for progress in medical research, new climate solutions, improvements in our quality of life and work, and more effective democratic governance. But like any major technological revolution, AI also raises concerns about a loss of control, concentrations of power, and the consequences for jobs and the environment.
Whatever your outlook, one thing is certain: our vision of innovation and the choices we make today will profoundly shape our societies’ future. This is an issue that extends far beyond the borders of France and Europe. It matters for everyone who does not want to be subjected to a revolution that is led entirely by a handful of tech giants. People around the world want to be fully involved in shaping their own future.
Faced with such a strategically important innovation, we must step up efforts to promote AI development in all countries and engage in a global conversation about where the technology is heading. We urgently need to align the interests of all stakeholders—the public and private sectors and civil society—to make AI an engine of shared progress, rather than a new source of inequality.
This is what is at stake now. And at the AI Action Summit in Paris (February 6-11), held at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron, this global discussion is set to gather pace. The summit has three main objectives: societal, economic, and diplomatic. The first two matter because if we are going to continue innovating and creating with AI, it is up to us to anticipate the challenges ahead. We need to harness the benefits while controlling its impact, facilitate its adoption, and encourage those applications with the potential to add value, whether it be in health care, education, industry, or culture.
On the diplomatic front, the summit provides an opportunity to bring together partners and allies of France and Europe. Together, we will reaffirm our shared values by devising solutions with the goal that every country should have access to sovereign and secure AI.
Over the past year, this objective of shared progress has guided our preparation of the summit. That is why we have invited thousands of people—business leaders, heads of state and government, researchers, and civil-society leaders—from more than a hundred countries. I know from my own travels and exchanges in preparing for the occasion that there is a widely shared desire to develop local and regional AI ecosystems that can meet the needs of people and of companies. The idea of being real players in the development of AI, not just customers or end users, resonates at every level. It is a widely held goal in emerging countries, notably in Africa and Asia, as well as in the United States.
In France and Europe, our ambition is to innovate in ways that respect shared values and promote the European Union’s strategic autonomy. France’s own AI ecosystem is advancing quickly. We have considerable assets to support further innovation—exceptional researchers and engineers, excellent training, a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and abundant low-carbon electricity—and we are confident in our ability to leverage them in the interest of shared progress. We are proud to be the home of more than 700 AI startups and numerous scaleups, including Mistral AI, poolside, H, Alan, Dataiku, Pigment, and many more. We also have launched numerous training, public debate, and social dialogue initiatives.
Following on from the Artificial Intelligence Commission that I co-chaired with economist Philippe Aghion, the Paris summit offers a unique opportunity for France to showcase its innovation ecosystem, accelerate its development, and announce new investments.
At the European level, it is essential that we place the emphasis firmly on AI innovation. Europe has many assets, and we must neither impede the development of AI through excessive caution, nor allow others to decide for us. Open, interoperable AI aligned with our democratic values is possible if we can simplify our regulations and invest in shared European solutions.
Of course, the AI revolution goes beyond Europe’s borders. France, with its many partners around the world, is advocating a vision of AI that respects private citizens and facilitates economic transformations that will benefit society as a whole. That means creating a new ‘AI commons’, which is why the launch of a new foundation dedicated to that end will be announced at the summit.
The purpose will be to make valuable AI-training datasets more accessible, while also guaranteeing privacy. And to harness AI’s vast potential, we must foster the development of open, less computationally intensive, greener models, as well as encouraging open-source AI for greater transparency and accessibility. These resources will create fertile ground for new startups and allow researchers and nonprofit organizations to make major advances of their own, including in the fight against cancer and other diseases.
Finally, while AI has the potential to play a key role in combating climate change and protecting vulnerable ecosystems, the International Energy Agency reports that AI-related energy consumption could increase tenfold by 2026. Thus, we urgently need to reconcile the digital transition with the ecological transition, by encouraging more frugal AI, defining new standards, and investing massively in more sustainable, less energy-intensive infrastructure. With this goal in mind, a new coalition for sustainable AI will be launched at the summit.
The AI Action Summit comes at just the right time. This is not a technological revolution that we can simply observe and accept as passive bystanders. We must bend its arc toward shared progress, by reconciling innovation with the imperatives of sovereignty and social and environmental responsibility.
Anne Bouverot
Special Envoy of the French President for the AI Action Summit.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.
www.project-syndicate.org
