PARIS — Europe will invest an additional $51.5 billion to bolster the bloc’s artificial intelligence ambition, European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday.

It will come on top of the European AI Champions Initiative, that has already pledged 150 billion euros from providers, investors and industry, von der Leyen told the Paris AI Summit.

“Thereby we aim to mobilize a total of 200 billion euros for AI investments in Europe,” she said.

Von der Leyen said investments will focus on industrial and mission-critical technologies.

Companies which have signed up to the European AI Champions initiative, spearheaded by investment company General Catalyst, include Airbus, ASML, Siemens, Infineon, Philips, Mistral and Volkswagen.
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PARIS — In front of political and tech leaders gathered at a summit in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a strategy on Monday to make up for the delay in France and Europe in investing in artificial intelligence (AI) but was faced with a “counter-summit” that pointed out the risks of the technology. 

The use of chatbots at work and school is destroying jobs, professions and threatening the acquisition of knowledge, said union representatives gathered at the Theatre de la Concorde located in the Champs-Elysees gardens, less than a kilometer from the venue of the Summit for Action on Artificial Intelligence. 

Habib El Kettani, from Solidaires Informatique, a union representing IT workers, described an “automation already underway for about ten years,” which has been reinforced with the arrival of the flagship tool ChatGPT at the end of 2022. 

“I have been fighting for ten years to ensure that my job does not become an endangered species,” said Sandrine Larizza, from the CGT union at France Travail, a public service dedicated to the unemployed. 

She deplored “a disappearance of social rights that goes hand in hand with the automation of public services,” where the development of AI has served, according to her “to make people work faster to respond less and less to the needs of users, by reducing staff numbers.” 

Loss of meaning 

“With generative AI, it is no longer the agent who responds by email to the unemployed person but the generative AI that gives the answers with a multitude of discounted job offers in subcontracting,” said Larizza. 

This is accompanied by “a destruction of our human capacities to play a social role, a division into micro-tasks on the assembly line and an industrialization of our professions with a loss of meaning,” she said, a few days after the announcement of a partnership between France Travail and the French startup Mistral. 

“Around 40 projects” are also being tested “with postal workers,” said Marie Vairon, general secretary of the Sud PTT union of the La Poste and La Banque Postale group. 

AI is used “to manage schedules and simplify tasks with a tool tested since 2020 and generalized since 2023,” she said, noting that the results are “not conclusive.” 

After the implementation at the postal bank, La Banque Postale, of “Lucy,” a conversational robot handling some “300,000 calls every month,” Vairon is concerned about a “generative AI serving as a coach for bank advisers.” 

‘Students are using it’ 

On the education side, “whether we like it or not, students are using it,” said Stephanie de Vanssay, national educational and digital adviser of the National Union of Autonomous Unions (UNSA) for primary and secondary school. 

“We have indifferent teachers, worried teachers who are afraid of losing control and quality of learning, skeptics, and those who are angry about all the other priorities,” she said. 

Developing the critical thinking of some 12 million students is becoming, in any case, “an even more serious concern and it is urgent to explain how to use these tools and why,” de Vanssay said. 

The Minister of National Education Elisabeth Borne announced on Thursday the launch of a call for tenders for an AI for teachers, as well as a charter of use and training for teachers. 

“No critical thinking without interactions and without helping each other to think and progress in one’s thinking, which requires intermediation,” said Beatrice Laurent, national secretary of UNSA education. “A baby with a tablet and nursery rhymes will not learn to speak.”
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French President Emmanuel Macron wants Europe to become a leader in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, he told a global summit of AI and political leaders in Paris Monday where he announced that France’s private sector has invested nearly $113 billion in French AI.

Financial investment is key to achieving the goal of Europe as an AI hub, Macron said in his remarks delivered in English at the Grand Palais.

He said the European bloc would also need to “adopt the Notre Dame strategy,” a reference to the lightning swift rebuilding of France’s famed Notre Dame cathedral in five years after a devastating 2019 fire, the result of simplified regulations and adherence to timelines.

“We showed the rest of the of the world that when we commit to a clear timeline, we can deliver,” the French leader said.

Henna Virkkunen, the European Union’s digital head, indicated that the EU is in agreement with simplifying regulations. The EU approved the AI Act last year, the world’s first extensive set of rules designed to regulate technology.

European countries want to ensure that they have a stake in the tech race against an aggressive U.S. and other emerging challengers. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen is scheduled to address the EU’s ability to compete in the tech world Tuesday.

Macron’s announcement that the French private sector will invest heavily in AI “reassured” Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, a U.S. company with French co-founders that is a hub for open-source AI, that there will be “ambitious” projects in France, according to Reuters.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s head, told the gathering that the shift to AI will be “the biggest of our lifetimes.”

However, such a big shift also comes with problems for the AI community. France had wanted the summit to adopt a non-binding text that AI would be inclusive and sustainable.

“We have the chance to democratize access [to a new technology] from the start,” Pichai told the summit.

Whether the U.S. will agree to that initiative is uncertain, considering the U.S. government’s recent moves to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance is attending the summit and expected to deliver a speech on Tuesday. Other politicians expected Tuesday at the plenary session are Chinese Vice Premier Zhan Guoqing and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. About 100 politicians are expected.

There are also other considerations with a shift to AI. The World Trade Organization says its calculations indicate that a “near universal adoption of AI … could increase trade by up to 14 percentage points” from what it is now but cautions that global “fragmentation” of regulations on AI technology and data flow could bring about the contraction of both trade and output.

A somewhat frightening side effect of AI technology is that it can replace the need for humans in some sectors.

International Labor Organization leader Gilbert Houngbo told the summit Monday that the jobs that AI can do, such as clerical work, are disproportionately held by women. According to current statistics, that development would likely widen the gender pay gap.
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A consortium led by Elon Musk said Monday it has offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, another salvo in the billionaire’s fight to block the artificial intelligence startup from transitioning to a for-profit firm.

Musk’s bid is likely to ratchet up longstanding tensions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the future of the startup at the heart of a boom in generative AI technology. Altman on Monday promptly posted on X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”

Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 as a nonprofit, but left before the company took off. He founded the competing AI startup xAI in 2023.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of tech and social media company X, is a close ally of President Donald Trump. He spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump, and leads the Department of Government Efficiency, a new arm of the White House tasked with radically shrinking the federal bureaucracy. Musk recently criticized a $500 billion OpenAI-led project announced by Trump at the White House.

OpenAI is now trying to transition into a for-profit from a nonprofit entity, which it says is required to secure the capital needed for developing the best AI models.

Musk sued Altman and others in August last year, claiming they violated contract provisions by putting profit ahead of the public good in the push to advance AI. In November, he asked a U.S. district judge for a preliminary injunction blocking OpenAI from converting to a for-profit structure.

Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman says the founders originally approached him to fund a nonprofit focused on developing AI to benefit humanity, but that it was now focused on making money.

“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk said in a statement Monday. “We will make sure that happens.”

Musk and OpenAI backer Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“Musk’s bid puts another wrinkle into OpenAI’s quest to remove the nonprofit’s control over its for-profit entity,” said Rose Chan Loui, executive director of the UCLA Law Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofits.

“This bid sets a marker for the valuation of the nonprofit’s economic interests,” she said. “If OpenAI values the nonprofit’s interests at less than what Musk is offering, then they would have to show why.”

The consortium led by Musk includes his AI startup xAI, Baron Capital Group, Valor Management, Atreides Management, Vy Fund III, Emanuel Capital Management, and Eight Partners.

XAI could merge with OpenAI following a deal, according to The Wall Street Journal which first reported Musk’s offer earlier Monday. XAI recently raised $6 billion from investors at a valuation of $40 billion, sources have told Reuters.

Throwing a wrench

“This (bid) is definitely throwing a wrench in things,” said Jonathan Macey, a Yale Law School professor specializing in corporate governance.

“The nonprofit is supposed to take money to do whatever good deeds, and if OpenAI prefers to sell it to somebody else for less money, it’s a concern for protecting the interests of the beneficiaries of the not-for-profit. If this was a public company, plaintiffs’ lawyers would justifiably be lining up down the block to sue that transaction.”

OpenAI was valued at $157 billion in its last funding round, cementing its status as one of the most valuable private companies in the world. SoftBank Group is in talks to lead a funding round of up to $40 billion in OpenAI at a valuation of $300 billion, including the new funds, Reuters reported in January.

Aside from any antitrust implications, a deal this size would need Musk and his consortium to raise enormous funds.

“Musk’s offer to buy OpenAI’s nonprofit should significantly complicate OpenAI’s current fundraising and the process of converting into a for-profit corporation,” said Gil Luria, analyst at D.A. Davidson.

“The offer seems to be backed by more credible investors … OpenAI may not be able to ignore it. It will be the fiduciary responsibility of OpenAI’s board to decide whether this is a better offer, which could call into question the offer from SoftBank.”

Musk’s stock in Tesla is valued at roughly $165 billion, according to LSEG data, but his leverage with banks is likely to be thin after his $44 billion buyout of the social media platform that was called Twitter in 2022.
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PARIS — Major world leaders are meeting for an AI summit in Paris, where challenging diplomatic talks are expected as tech titans fight for dominance in the fast-moving technology industry.

Heads of state, top government officials, CEOs and scientists from around 100 countries are participating in the two-day international summit from Monday.

High-profile attendees include U.S. Vice President JD Vance, on his first overseas trip since taking office, and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing.

“We’re living a technology and scientific revolution we’ve rarely seen,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday on national television France 2.

France and Europe must seize the “opportunity” because AI “will enable us to live better, learn better, work better, care better and it’s up to us to put this artificial intelligence at the service of human beings,” he said.

Vance’s debut abroad

The summit will give some European leaders a chance to meet Vance for the first time. The 40-year-old vice president was just 18 months into his time as Ohio’s junior senator when Donald Trump picked him as his running mate.

Vance was joined by his wife Usha and their three children — Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel — for the trip to Europe. They were greeted on French soil Monday morning by Manuel Valls, the minister for Overseas France, and the U.S. Embassy’s charge d’affaires, David McCawley.

On Tuesday, Vance will have a working lunch with Macron, with discussions on Ukraine and the Middle East on the menu.

Vance, like President Donald Trump, has questioned U.S. spending on Ukraine and the approach to isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump promised to end the fighting within six months of taking office.

Vance will attend later this week the Munich Security Conference, where he may meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Leaders in Europe have been watching carefully Trump’s recent statements on threats to impose tariffs on the European Union, take control of Greenland and his suggestion that Palestinians clear out Gaza once the fighting in the Israel-Hamas conflict ends — an idea that’s been flatly rejected by Arab allies.

Fostering AI advances

The summit, which gathers major players such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, aims at fostering AI advances in sectors like health, education, environment and culture.

A global public-private partnership named “Current AI” is to be launched to support large-scale initiatives that serve the general interest.

The Paris summit “is the first time we’ll have had such a broad international discussion in one place on the future of AI,” said Linda Griffin, vice president of public policy at Mozilla. “I see it as a norm-setting moment.”

Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, noted an opportunity to shape AI governance in a new direction by “moving away from this concentration of power amongst a handful of private actors and building this public interest AI instead.”

However, it remains unclear if the U.S. will support such initiatives.

French organizers also hope the summit will lead to major investment announcements in Europe.

France is to announce AI private investments worth a total of $113 billion over the coming years, Macron said, presenting it as “the equivalent” of Trump’s Stargate AI data centers project.

Indian PM co-hosting the summit

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is co-hosting the summit with Macron, in an effort to involve more global actors in AI development and prevent the sector from becoming a U.S.-China battle.

India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid “perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world.”

Macron will also travel Wednesday with Modi to the southern city port of Marseille to inaugurate a new Indian consulate and visit the ITER nuclear research site.

France has become a key defense partner for India, with talks underway on purchasing 26 Rafale fighter jets and three Scorpene submarines. Officials in New Delhi said discussions are in final phase and the deal could be inked in a few weeks.
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U.S. President Donald Trump says he wants to make the United States the cryptocurrency capital of the world. He is putting his plan into place in the early weeks of his second presidential term. VOA’s Michelle Quinn has the story.
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Several governments, including the U.S., Taiwan and Australia, have banned the use of China’s AI software DeepSeek on official devices. Analysts say these restrictions are justified, as tests show DeepSeek not only collects excessive user data but also filters sensitive topics and promotes Chinese government narratives more aggressively than Baidu and WeChat. This raises concern that it could become a powerful tool for controlling speech and public opinion. 

Click here for the full story in Mandarin.
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WASHINGTON — A bipartisan duo in the U.S. House is proposing legislation to ban the Chinese artificial intelligence app DeepSeek from federal devices, similar to the policy already in place for the popular social media platform TikTok.

Lawmakers Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat from New Jersey, and Darin LaHood, a Republican from Illinois, on Thursday introduced the “No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act,” which would ban federal employees from using the Chinese AI app on government-owned electronics. They cited the Chinese government’s ability to use the app for surveillance and misinformation as reasons to keep it away from federal networks.

“The Chinese Communist Party has made it abundantly clear that it will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security, spew harmful disinformation, and collect data on Americans,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “We simply can’t risk the CCP infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security.”

The proposal comes after the Chinese software company in January published an AI model that performed at a competitive level with models developed by American firms like OpenAI, Meta, Alphabet and others. DeepSeek purported to develop the model at a fraction of the cost of its American counterparts. The announcement raised alarm bells and prompted debates among policymakers and leading Silicon Valley financiers and technologists.

The churn over AI is coming at a moment of heightened competition between the U.S. and China in a range of areas, including technological innovation. The U.S. has levied tariffs on Chinese goods, restricted Chinese tech firms like Huawei from being used in government systems, and banned the export of state of the art microchips thought to be needed to develop the highest end AI models.

Last year, Congress and then-President Joe Biden approved a divestment of the popular social media platform TikTok from its Chinese parent company or face a ban across the U.S.; that policy is now on hold. President Donald Trump, who originally proposed a ban of the app in his first term, signed an executive order last month extending a window for a long-term solution before the legally required ban takes effect.

In 2023, Biden banned TikTok from federal-issued devices.

“The technology race with the Chinese Communist Party is not one the United States can afford to lose,” LaHood said in a statement. “This commonsense, bipartisan piece of legislation will ban the app from federal workers’ phones while closing backdoor operations the company seeks to exploit for access. It is critical that Congress safeguard Americans’ data and continue to ensure American leadership in AI.”

The bill would single out DeepSeek and any AI application developed by its parent company, the hedge fund High-Flyer, as subject to the ban. The legislation includes exceptions for national security and research purposes that would allow federal employers to study DeepSeek.

Some lawmakers wish to go further. A bill proposed last week by Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, would bar the import or export of any AI technology from China writ large, citing national security concerns.
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Robots with reasoning power are becoming a reality thanks to massive amounts of training data and breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. VOA’s Matt Dibble visits a lab where robots are learning to solve problems themselves. Cameras: Matt Dibble, Tina Trinh.
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U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled an expanded 14-count indictment accusing former Google software engineer Linwei Ding of stealing artificial intelligence trade secrets to benefit two Chinese companies he was secretly working for. 

Ding, 38, a Chinese national, was charged by a federal grand jury in San Francisco with seven counts each of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. 

Each economic espionage charge carries a maximum 15-year prison term and $5 million fine, while each trade secrets charge carries a maximum 10-year term and $250,000 fine. 

The defendant, also known as Leon Ding, was indicted last March on four counts of theft of trade secrets. He is free on bond. His lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Ding’s case was coordinated through an interagency Disruptive Technology Strike Force created in 2023 by the Biden administration. 

The initiative was designed to help stop advanced technology from being acquired by countries such as China and Russia or potentially threatening national security. 

Prosecutors said Ding stole information about the hardware infrastructure and software platform that lets Google’s supercomputing data centers train large AI models. 

Some of the allegedly stolen chip blueprints were meant to give Google an edge over cloud computing rivals Amazon and Microsoft, which design their own, and reduce Google’s reliance on chips from Nvidia. 

Prosecutors said Ding joined Google in May 2019 and began his thefts three years later when he was being courted to join an early-stage Chinese technology company. 

Ding allegedly uploaded more than 1,000 confidential files by May 2023 and later circulated a PowerPoint presentation to employees of a China startup he founded, saying that country’s policies encouraged development of a domestic AI industry. 

Google was not charged and has said it cooperated with law enforcement. 

According to court records describing a December 18 hearing, prosecutors and defense lawyers discussed a “potential resolution” to Ding’s case, “but anticipate the matter proceeding to trial.” 

The case is U.S. v. Ding, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 24-cr-00141. 
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PARIS — France hosts top tech players next week at an artificial intelligence summit meant as a “wake-up call” for Europe as it struggles with AI challenges from the United States and China.

Players from across the sector and representatives from 80 nations will gather in the French capital on February 10 and 11 in the sumptuous Grand Palais, built for the 1900 Universal Exhibition.

In the run-up, President Emmanuel Macron will on Feb. 4 visit research centers applying AI to science and health, before hosting scientists and Nobel Prize winners at his Elysee Palace residence on Wednesday.

A wider science conference will be held at the Polytechnique engineering school on Thursday and Friday.

“The summit comes at exactly the right time for this wake-up call for France and Europe, and to show we are in position” to take advantage of the technology, an official in Macron’s office told reporters.

In recent weeks, Washington’s announcement of $500 billion in investment to build up AI infrastructure and the release of a frugal but powerful generative AI model by Chinese firm DeepSeek have focused minds in Europe.

France must “not let this revolution pass it by,” Macron’s office said.

Attendees at the summit will include Sam Altman, head of OpenAI — the firm that brought generative models to public consciousness in 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT.

Google boss Sundar Pichai and Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis, who leads the company’s DeepMind AI research unit, will also come, alongside Arthur Mensch, founder of French AI developer Mistral.

The Elysee has said there are “talks” on hosting DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, and has yet to clarify whether X owner Elon Musk — who has his own generative initiative, xAI — has accepted an invitation.

Nor is it clear who will attend from the United States and China, with the French presidency saying only “very high level” representatives will come.

Confirmed guests from Europe include European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

‘Stoke confidence’

The tone of the AI summit will be “neither catastrophizing, nor naive,” Macron’s AI envoy Anne Bouverot told AFP.

Hosting the conference is also an opportunity for Paris to show off its own AI ecosystem, which numbers around 750 companies.

Macron’s office has said the summit would see the announcement of “massive” investments along the lines of his annual “Choose France” business conference, at which $15.4 billion of inward investment were pledged in 2024.

Beyond the economic opportunities, AI’s impact on culture including artistic creativity and news production will be discussed in a side-event over the weekend.

Debates open to the public, such as that one, are aimed at showing off “positive use cases for AI” to “stoke confidence and speed up adoption” of the technology, said France’s digital minister Clara Chappaz.

For now, the French public is skeptical of AI, with 79 percent of respondents telling pollsters Ifop they were “concerned” about the technology in a recent survey.

More ‘inclusive’ AI?

Paris says it also hopes the summit can help kick off its vision of a more ethical and accessible and less resource-intensive AI.

At present, “the AI under development is pushed by a few large players from a few countries,” Bouverot said, whereas France wants “to promote more inclusive development.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been invited to co-host the Paris summit, in a push to bring governments on board.

One of the summit’s aims is the establishment of a public-interest foundation for which Paris aims to raise $2.5 billion over five years.

The effort would be “a public-private partnership between various governments, businesses and philanthropic foundations from different countries,” Macron’s office said.

Paris hopes at the summit to chart different efforts at AI governance around the world and gather commitments for environmentally sustainable AI — although no binding mechanism is planned for now.

“There are lots of big principles emerging around responsible, trustworthy AI, but it’s not clear or easy to implement for the engineers in technical terms,” said Laure de Roucy-Rochegonde, director of the geopolitical technology center at the French Institute for International Relations.
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LONDON — Britain will become the first country to introduce laws against AI tools used to generate sexual abuse images, the government announced Saturday.

The government will make it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to generate sexualized images of children, punishable by up to five years in prison, interior minister Yvette Cooper revealed.

It will also be illegal to possess AI “pedophile manuals” which teach people how to use AI to sexually abuse children, punishable by up to three years in prison.

“We know that sick predators’ activities online often lead to them carrying out the most horrific abuse in person,” said Cooper.

The new laws are “designed to keep our children safe online as technologies evolve. It is vital that we tackle child sexual abuse online as well as offline,” she added.

“Children will be protected from the growing threat of predators generating AI images and from online sexual abuse as the U.K. becomes the first country in the world to create new AI sexual abuse offences,” said a government statement.

AI tools are being used to generate child sexual abuse images by “nudeifying” real life images of children or by “stitching the faces of other children onto existing images,” said the government.

The new laws will also criminalize “predators who run websites designed for other pedophiles to share vile child sexual abuse content or advice on how to groom children,” punishable by up to ten years in prison, said the government.

The measures will be introduced as part of the Crime and Policing Bill when it comes to parliament.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has warned of the growing number of sexual abuse AI images of children being produced.

Over a 30-day period in 2024, IWF analysts identified 3,512 AI child abuse images on a single dark web site.

The number of the most serious category of images also rose by 10% in a year, it found.
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