PARIS, France – French President Emmanuel Macron said this week that Europe is pursuing artificial intelligence innovation, technology regulation and competition with China in a very different way from the United States, as the continent seeks to become the world’s third largest technology power. .
“It’s crazy that all the giants in the world come from China and the United States,” Macron told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an exclusive interview in Paris on Tuesday.
“We need more big European companies, and I think Mistral AI can be one of them,” Macron said of France’s leading artificial intelligence company. Microsoft It recently invested €15 million ($16.3 million) in Mistral.
Macron also praised new French artificial intelligence startup H, which this week announced it had raised funding A whopping $220 million from the first round of financing.
“I think having a very vivid, dynamic and ambitious European ecosystem is even a good thing for the American ecosystem,” he said.
Macron spoke to CNBC as tech leaders gathered in Paris for the VivaTech innovation trade show. On Tuesday, the Elysée Palace hosted a group of business leaders and engineers in the field of artificial intelligence ahead of the show.
The trade show and conference follows a new wave of private investment in the country, led by a commitment to: Microsoft 4 billion euros, this is France’s largest aid ever.
“The more artificial intelligence companies decide to locate in Europe, the more European governments will find themselves in the same position as the U.S. and Chinese governments,” he said.
“Our challenge for artificial intelligence is acceleration, innovation and investment, and on the other side is regulation at the right scale,” he added.
The European Union leads the United States in regulating artificial intelligence, passing its first set of major regulatory rules, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, in March.
Macron has also defended the EU’s strict online privacy rules, rejecting the widely held view in Washington that Brussels is deliberately trying to undermine the dominance of U.S. tech giants such as Google and Meta through a regulatory competition strategy.
“I think this is wrong,” Macron said. “If I want to provide guarantees for your privacy, your data storage, your cloud views, that’s a sovereign and very important democratic issue.”
He compared allowing U.S. tech giants to operate under U.S. regulations in Europe to allowing French banks to ignore U.S. banking regulations in the United States.
“The point is, when you operate in the United States, I’m not going to regulate you, but make sure that when you operate in continental Europe, you have to respect European rules.”
When it comes to China, however, Macron hinted that he thinks some U.S. tech regulations go too far.
For example, he said that France does not believe that TikTok (a large social media application owned by China’s ByteDance) poses a major threat to national security.
Under a recently passed U.S. law in the name of national security, ByteDance will be required to divest TikTok in order to continue operating on U.S. devices.
“We are not taking this approach, we are neutral in terms of technology, nationality and players,” Macron said.
“Look, when you talk about trade, innovation and the economy, I think China is a competitor. I think unfortunately, we should be working more collectively to push them to comply with international rules rather than deciding that we don’t respect international rules. It’s up to us,” he said.
“They compete and are very good at creating innovation and production,” he said. “So far we have been naive and today Europe’s economy is less productive than the United States”
About The Author
