PM Modi Co-Chairs AI Summit In France: What's On Agenda, Who Is Attending

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with French President Emmanuel Macron, is co-hoasting the Game Changer AI Summit 2025 in Paris, where the top world leaders, top tech executives, policymakers, and visionary startup founders have gathered to shape the future of artificial intelligence (AI) governance, innovation, and ethics. The high-stakes meeting aims to address challenges in harnessing the transformative potential of AI while navigating growing concerns over regulatory overreach that some argue could hinder innovation.

Top political leaders including US Vice President JD Vance and China's Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing are also attending the summit, as well as top executives such as Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI's Altman.

French Target 

France hopes that world leaders and tech executives at the summit will agree the AI revolution should be inclusive and sustainable, although it was unclear on Monday whether the United States would be supportive. Eagerness to rein in AI's potential has waned since previous summits in Britain and South Korea that focused world powers' attention on the technology's risks after ChatGPT's viral launch in 2022.

India's AI Diplomacy

Prime Minister Modi's presence at the high-profile event marks a significant step in India's AI strategy, underscoring its intent to position itself alongside AI powerhouses like the US and China. With a strong strength of 420,000 skilled professionals, the country already has the second-largest installed AI talent base.

Growing at a compound annual growth rate of 25-35 per cent, New Delhi is making rapid advancements in AI adoption, research, and talent development. The country's AI industry is projected to reach $17 billion by 2027. 

By partnering with France for the AI summit, India is strengthening its foothold in the global AI race by leveraging its technological prowess and democratic values to champion ethical AI development.

Shift In US, EU Stance

As US President Donald Trump has torn up his predecessor Joe Biden's AI guardrails to promote American competitiveness, pressure has built on the European Union to pursue a lighter-touch approach to AI to help keep European companies in the tech race.

This comes as China's DeepSeek challenged the United States' AI leadership last month by freely distributing a human-like reasoning system, galvanizing geopolitical and industry rivals to race faster still.

According to news agency Reuters, a January 30 version of the non-binding draft statement on AI stewardship called for an "inclusive approach" to AI that is multi-stakeholder, human rights-based and bolsters the developing world. The draft statement also reportedly laid out priorities that included "avoiding market concentration" and "making AI sustainable for people and the planet."

Trump's early moves on AI have underscored how far the strategies to regulate AI in the United States, China and the EU have diverged. And many at the two-day summit that started on Monday pushed the EU to soften its own rulebook.

"If we want growth, jobs and progress, we must allow innovators to innovate, builders to build and developers to develop," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an op-ed in Le Monde newspaper.

Even the summit's host, French President Emmanuel Macron said, "There's a risk some decide to have no rules and that's dangerous. But there's also the opposite risk, if Europe gives itself too many rules."

"We should not be afraid of innovation," Macron told regional French newspapers.

European lawmakers last year approved the bloc's AI Act, the world's first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology.

Capital Gains

One early outcome from the summit was the launch of Current AI, a partnership of countries such as France and Germany and industry players including Google and Salesforce. With an initial $400 million in investment, the partnership will spearhead public-interest projects such as making high-quality data for AI available and investing in open-source tools. It is aiming for up to $2.5 billion in capital over five years.

Current AI founder Martin Tisne told Reuters a public-interest focus was necessary to avoid AI having downsides like social media has had. "We have to have learned the lessons," he said.

Separately, France will announce private sector investments totalling some 109 billion euros ($113 billion) during the summit, Macron said on Sunday.

"The size of this 100 billion euro investment reassured us, in a way, that there's going to be ambitious enough projects in France," said Clem Delangue, the CEO of Hugging Face, a US company with French co-founders that is a hub for open-source AI online.