Paris AI Summit kicks off with PM Modi as co-chair: What to expect

On February 10 and 11, France will be the centre of the artificial intelligence (AI) debate, with the official beginning of the third edition of the AI Action Summit in its capital, Paris. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to co-chair the Paris Summit.

It’s the latest in a series of global dialogues around AI governance with two previous editions held in the UK in 2023, and a smaller gathering in Seoul, South Korea, last year. It also comes amid the meteoric rise in popularity of the low-cost Chinese foundational model DeepSeek, which has shook up the industry.

The Paris Summit aims to achieve three major objectives: Provide access to independent, safe and reliable AI to a wide range of users; develop AI that is more environmentally friendly; and ensure global governance of artificial intelligence that is both effective and inclusive.

The Summit will focus on five major themes, including public service AI, future of work, innovation and culture, trust in AI, and global governance of AI. The summit is expected to announce a key outcome — a foundation that will look at AI in the public interest to cater to the needs of the Global South, The Indian Express had earlier reported.

While the Bletchley summit was focused on the debate surrounding the ‘doomsday’ concerns posed by AI, and eventually resulted in all 25 states, including the US and China, signing the Bletchley Declaration on AI Safety, the Seoul summit last May saw 16 top AI companies making voluntary commitments to develop AI in a transparent manner.

China, DeepSeek could be the buzzword. There is one major difference between this year’s gathering, and the inaugural summit that happened in the UK in 2023: China, and DeepSeek, a low cost model from the country, which has challenged the hitherto US domination in the AI field.

So far, it was largely US companies like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google, which were setting the AI narrative – they had access to the most cutting edge hardware made by another American company in Nvidia, and also access to the best AI talent in the world.

But, earlier this year, when a Chinese AI lab released DeepSeek as an open-sourced model, the world took note. There were some key reasons for that. Not only was DeepSeek competing with OpenAI’s latest models on several parameters, it was trained at a cost of around $6 million while having limited access to cutting edge hardware due to sanctions. This was a fraction of what OpenAI took to train its models. Besides, DeepSeek is open-source, unlike OpenAI’s models, which allows developers to easily build on top of the former’s models, triggering fears that OpenAI’s competitive advantage might be at risk.

That is palpable from who is going to be at the event.

US Vice President JD Vance will be present at the Summit, marking his first official trip abroad since taking office, along with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, as America looks to present a strong front. China’s President Xi Jinping will be sending his special envoy, Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, signaling high stakes for the meeting.

In many ways, the impact of DeepSeek is good for several countries, which are not the US. The model has shown that it is possible to train a well rounded foundational model, without the need for the absolute best hardware or piles and piles of money. It is especially good news for countries like France, from where an AI model in Mistral has already come out.

For India, DeepSeek’s release was largely seen as a wake up call after the country’s largely ‘will it, won’t it’ stance on building a foundational model.

India in focus
The Second India-France Al Policy Roundtable has been planned as a side event during the Summit. The event will be organised by the Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru, Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Nasscom, and IndiaAl Mission of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. It will deliberate on key policy positions regarding global Al development and explore opportunities for synergy between India and France.

The Summit comes as India prepares its response to the AI arms race across the world.

The government has selected 10 companies to supply 18,693 graphics processing units or GPUs — high end chips needed to develop machine learning tools — that can go into developing a foundational model. This is more than the initial aim of the Rs 10,370 crore IndiaAI Mission, under which the government was looking to procure 10,000 GPUs.

The companies empaneled to provide the GPU services include Jio Platforms, the Hiranandani Group-backed Yotta, Tata Communications, E2E Networks, NxtGen Datacenter, CMS Computers, Ctrls Datacenters, Locuz Enterprise Solutions, Orient Technologies, and Vensysco Technologies.

India has also decided to build a domestic large language model (LLM) of its own as part of the IndiaAI Mission and has called for proposals from companies that are looking to build the models.

IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had earlier said that the country could produce a “world class” AI model in the next 4-8 months. He had emphasised that the models will be diverse and “representative of Indian contextual and relevance”, “address India-specific challenges and opportunities,” and “robust mechanisms for bias mitigation, fairness,” and “ethical AI principles”.

The government is open to funding multiple such models based on scalability and viability. The intellectual property of the models will remain with the entity with provision for a perpetual license for use by the government for public use.

The government has envisioned a two-pronged approach for funding the models: One is an initial direct financial support for the development of the models, which would include milestone-based disbursements. The second is equity-based funding.

Approaches on regulation

All these developments come as policymakers across jurisdictions have stepped up regulatory scrutiny of generative AI tools, but have taken varying approaches. The concerns being flagged fall into three broad heads: privacy, system bias and violation of intellectual property rights.

The policy response has been different across jurisdictions, with the European Union having taken a predictably tougher stance by proposing a regulation that segregates AI as per use case scenarios, based broadly on the degree of invasiveness and risk. The UK is seen to be on the other end of the spectrum, with a decidedly ‘light-touch’ approach that aims to foster, and not stifle, innovation in this nascent field.

The US approach so far has slotted somewhere in between, which could see further deregulation now. China too has released its own set of measures to regulate AI.

India has maintained that the weaponisation represented by social media must be overcome and steps should be taken to ensure AI represents safety and trust, even as the technology represents a big opportunity.

Source: indianexpress