Co-hosts France and India were able to secure Beijing’s signature on a joint artificial intelligence declaration, but not London or Washington’s
Dozens of countries signed a declaration in Paris on Tuesday calling for AI development to be “open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all” and “making AI sustainable for people and the planet.”
But the US and UK were notable absentees from the list of signatories of the “Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence,” even as China’s support was secured by co-hosts France and India.
Visiting US Vice President JD Vance laid out several US reservations in a speech at the summit at the Grand Palais. “We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry,” he told the gathering of world and industry leaders. We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship.”
Vance alleged that the EU regulations such as the Digital Services Act and the GDPR rules on online privacy led to unacceptable compliance costs for smaller companies.
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“Of course, we want to ensure the internet is a safe place, but it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet, and it is something quite different to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation,” he said.
To the surprise of some observers, China did sign up to Tuesday’s declaration. And while Vance did not mention the government in Beijing by name, he appeared to refer to it at times on Tuesday.
“From CCTV to 5G equipment, we’re all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that’s been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes,” Vance said.
Chinese startup DeepSeek last month made its new AI reasoning model freely available, leading to a sharp 17% decline in the price of Nvidia shares. The tech company’s stock price had risen more than tenfold over the past two years amid the emergence of AI models like ChatGPT.
Vance argued that partnering with these cheap options “means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure.”
The British government was less forthcoming when explaining its reasons not to sign up. But a spokesman for Prime Minister Keir Starmer did say the UK government felt the declaration lacked “practical clarity” on issues like global governance, and ducked some “harder questions” on national security.
French President Emmanuel Macron told the summit — but not Vance, who left after giving his speech — in his closing address that he also favored cutting red tape.
However, he added that regulation was needed to ensure trust in AI, and to prevent people from rejecting it as unreliable. “We need a trustworthy AI,” Macron said, after spending the previous day touting France’s efforts to accelerate development in the sector.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, whose office drafted the GPDR and Digital Services Act, similarly said the EU planned to reduce bureaucratic hurdles, as Europe risks falling behind the US and China in the nascent industry.
Meanwhile, business mogul Elon Musk leaked news of an apparent bid to buy the company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, to the Wall Street Journal newspaper. Musk, who has been promoting his own chatbot Grok on the X platform, has been openly feuding with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for months, including as recently as Monday.
Altman responded to the publication by the WSJ with a curt “no thank you” online, while a company official spoke about it at more length in Paris.
“OpenAI is not for sale and any such suggestion is really disingenuous,” the company’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane said on the sidelines of the summit, dismissing the offer as coming from a competitor “who has struggled to keep up with the technology and compete with us in the marketplace.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the guest of honor and co-host in Paris, had spoken moments before Vance in Paris on Tuesday. He had appealed for international support, calling for “collective, global efforts to establish governance and standards that uphold our shared values, address risks and build trust” in AI. The Elysees Palace said as the summit concluded in Paris on Tuesday that India would host the next event of its kind.
