The ongoing AI Action Summit in Paris is the third major global AI summit, following summits in the UK in 2023 and South Korea in 2024.

Innovation takes precedence over safety

A notable distinction of the Paris Summit is a shift of priorities. Previous summits focused on safety, resulting in the 2023 Bletchley Declaration and commitments by 16 major tech firms in Seoul to ensure transparency, accountability, and oversight in AI development.

This year AI safety will follow discussions on equitable AI development, equitable sharing of AI benefits, and enhancing global collaboration to prevent technological fragmentation. Reflecting this shift, France rebranded the event from "AI Safety Summit" to "AI Action Summit."

President Emmanuel Macron said Europe has been a leader in building AI regulations but innovation must take precedence to prevent the region from lagging behind the US and China in AI technology. For the US, a leading force in AI, safety is no longer the top priority. The US delegation at the Paris Summit does not include representatives from the AI Safety Institute, which was established in late 2023. Google Vice President James Manyika said: "One of the things that's exciting about this summit is that it's given much greater focus on the opportunities from AI. I think too often many of these conversations have been too just focused on the risks and complexities and also not enough on the on the opportunity of AI."

The shift in focus reflects broader transformations in the AI landscape with the emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese open-source generative AI model. With significantly lower costs yet comparable performance to ChatGPT, Gemini, and Mistral, DeepSeek presents new opportunities for countries to develop flexible AI systems without relying on Silicon Valley’s tech giants, which have the advantage of financial, technology, and human resources. Jamal Atif, Director of Science for National Priority Programs in France and an AI professor at Paris-Dauphine University, said: "We now have open source models that perform as good as close models and this is very exciting. China and these people from DeepSeek have shown us how you can do it. We can do it. We need brain, we need talents. And it where Europe, you know, have an advantage because here in Europe we have good students. We have talent. We have brains. We have startups that are doing well."

AI geopolitics

The presence of state leaders and high-level representatives from over 100 countries, including US Vice President J.D. Vance and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, underscores AI’s growing geopolitical relevance. Discussions in Paris are expected to address how current global tensions influence AI cooperation and competition.

Nick Reiners, a geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, a global geopolitical risk consultancy based in New York, said the geopolitical aspect of AI has become more complicated in the current technology landscape and is increasingly entangled in the broader competition between major powers. The US’s AI policies have faced resistance from other nations. Reiners said last year’s AI Joint Declaration between China and France suggested that Europe and China share concerns about the US’s tech dominance in AI.

At this summit, participants may have difficulty reaching a joint commitment or statement on the future direction of AI development, particularly in open access to data, public benefit from AI, and AI’s role in environmental sustainability. A greater concern is that policy differences could lead to a fragmented global AI landscape, with countries blocking or banning each other’s technologies.

President Macron said: "I think banning a technology simply because it originates from a certain country is inappropriate. That is not our approach. For all non-European technologies, we will assess their impact on Europe's security and sovereignty. This has been our approach to technology."

For Europe and host nation France, the AI Summit is an opportunity to promote technological advancement in response to intense competition from the US and China. Just ahead of the summit, President Macron announced plans for AI investments in France totaling 113 billion USD. These investments will come from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Canada, the US, and major French technology companies like Thales, Orange, and Illiad.