On May 21, 2024, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech at a meeting with members in the field of artificial intelligence at the Elysee presidential palace in Paris, France.
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PARIS — France is asserting itself as the next artificial intelligence superpower. (Style note: Paris stands alone on the date line)
France’s achievements as a leader in artificial intelligence were hotly discussed at last week’s Viva Technology conference in Paris.
French artificial intelligence company H (formerly known as Holistic) sparked heated discussions as it raised $220 million in seed funding (“Raised $220 million in seed round”? Please adjust the second bullet point as well) Investors include Eric Schmidt, the billionaire former chief executive of US tech giant Amazon and Google.
A common theme among French AI companies that have received big funding is that they include American tech giants on their shareholder lists.
Earlier this month, France received Lots of new private investMicrosoft has committed €4 billion ($4.4 billion) to France, its largest ever investment in France.
Artificial intelligence is everywhere Viva Tech
At Viva Tech, artificial intelligence is everywhere. Past the huge bright pink “VIVA” sign in front, there is an alley called “AI Avenue”, surrounded by American technology companies such as Salesforce and AWS.
Generative AI is everywhere—even from companies you wouldn’t expect.
For example, French beauty giant L’Oréal demonstrated an artificial intelligence beauty assistant called “BeautyGenius” at a large booth near the center of the Porte de Versailles venue.
The success of Viva Tech is of great symbolic importance to France and is part of the country’s efforts to achieve this goal. become A leading center of technology and artificial intelligence that rivals countries like the United States and China.
“France is the European leader in artificial intelligence,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal at Viva Tech last week.
He made it clear that while France received help from U.S. tech giants, “we want to create and develop our own artificial intelligence in France.”
Talking about Microsoft’s investment in France, Le Maire said: “Microsoft is very popular in our country. But the challenge we face is to have our own equipment, our own scientists… We are working hard on this.”
France has a strong artificial intelligence research and development status system, with key facilities such as Meta’s Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research Center and Google Paris Artificial Intelligence Research Center, as well as leading universities.
Etienne Grass, France managing director of Capgemini Invent, Capgemini’s digital innovation arm, told CNBC: “France is one of the most dynamic innovation hubs in Europe.” Grass added: “This country has fostered a thriving Startups characterized by significant advances in artificial intelligence.”
Blossom Capital partner Imran Ghory said that while France has a strong record in research and academia, it has struggled to funnel quality talent to “great companies”.
Ghory said Meta and Google’s artificial intelligence labs “create a training ground for students and researchers to get an inside look at what leading technology companies look like and work.”
“We are now seeing the results as many researchers and AI engineers start forming their own companies.”
Competing for technology leadership
French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview with CNBC last week that France is “leading the European technology industry.” However, he noted that Europe “lags behind” the United States and that the continent needs more “big players”.
“It’s crazy that the giants in the world are all from China and the United States,” Macron said at the Elysée Palace, praising French artificial intelligence companies Mistral and H.
Last week, Macron met at the Elysée Palace with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Meta’s chief artificial intelligence scientist Yann LeCun, and Google’s senior director of technology and society. Vice President James Manyika and others discuss how to make Paris a global city.
Maurice Levy, chief executive of advertising and public relations giant Publicis Groupe, told CNBC’s Karen Tso that he believes France has the potential to become a top-five country in the development of artificial intelligence. Levi expresses France’s ‘determination’ Padding (narrow? Because based on the quote below, he seems to agree behind the US and China) The gap between the United States and China and Europe when it comes to artificial intelligence.
Levy said in a television interview last week that France “could become one of the five largest countries in the world in artificial intelligence,” behind the United States, China, Israel and the United Kingdom. He cited the huge Series H financing as an example of the current momentum of artificial intelligence development in France.
Levy said that about 40% of Viva Tech’s technology demonstrations are artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence, he said, “is not just taking off, it’s already taking off massively.”
In a fireside discussion last week, Google’s Manica said many of the innovations the company brings come from engineers in France.
He said Gemma AI, Google’s recently launched lightweight open source model, was heavily developed at the U.S. internet giant’s Paris artificial intelligence center.
According to data from Dealroom, France will account for approximately 20% of the total financing of new artificial intelligence startups in Europe in 2023, which is higher than the average financing ratio of 15% for new artificial intelligence startups in Europe.
However, France is not the leader in artificial intelligence in Europe, with British companies investing more than twice as much in artificial intelligence and GenAI as France, according to Dealroom data.
Innovation and Regulation
French President Emmanuel Macron said that the challenge facing Europe is to accelerate the research and development of artificial intelligence while carrying out “appropriate scale” regulation.
Last week, the European Union approved the Artificial Intelligence Act, a landmark law regulating artificial intelligence.
Some tech executives have warned that Europe’s regulations are too strict and could hinder its artificial intelligence ambitions. France is one of the countries that has criticized the EU’s artificial intelligence bill for being too restrictive on innovation.
Capgemini Chief Innovation Officer Pascal Brill said that while regulation is needed to ensure that artificial intelligence does not become too powerful, it is important to ensure that new laws such as the Artificial Intelligence Act do not accidentally “stifle” innovation.
He said regulators should avoid implementing the “precautionary principle”, which states that AI manufacturers should generally avoid doing things that could cause harm.
“You can’t stop artificial intelligence — this is just the end of the beginning,” Brill told CNBC. “It doesn’t stop here.”
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