In an interview with the regional press this Friday, Emmanuel Macron draws up the project of an ultra ambitious France in artificial intelligence. He wishes to make France the European “leader” of the AI.
Emmanuel Macron will grant an exclusive interview with France 2, Sunday January 9, 2025 during which he should discuss the major challenges of AI for France and the world in “unprecedented format”. But the head of state decided to surprise everyone with a first interview, this Friday, January 7, granted to several newspapers in the regional daily press, of which The Parisianon the occasion of the World Summit of Artificial Intelligence underway in Paris. Ambitious, serious and sometimes euphoric, he draws up the contours of the France’s project to be part of the great powers of AI in the future.
An “battle of independence” against the United States and China
While an infernal rhythm is imposed by the two Tech Cadors in terms of artificial intelligence – the United States and China – Emmanuel Macron intends to follow them out and not to miss “the Revolution” From AI, otherwise, France could simply “lose control”, in the words of the president. For him, it is not only a question of development and technological in the first sense of the term, but rather of an “battle of independence”. “If Europe seizes this subject, simplifies, accelerates, it has a card to play” against the monsters of the sector. “Today, everything is possible if we have a strategy and a real awakening,” he says.
This Thursday, February 6, France has already acted a partnership with the Arab Emirates to build the largest “data center” in Europe devoted to artificial intelligence. This campus will benefit from a calculation capacity of up to a Giga Whatt, “which represents investments of an order of magnitude of 30 to 50 billion euros”, announced the Élysée. This campus will be developed by “a consortium of Franco-Emiratis champions”, and in particular by the investment fund MGX, backed by the United Arab Emirates, it is said. From now, Emmanuel Macro intends to go up a gear.
100,000 AI researchers formed by 2030
“We need more economic and European patriotism” and “a plan” for “new supercalculators at European level”, he said to the regional daily press this Friday. “You have to go there, buy French and European AI every time it exists!”, He continues. Emmanuel Macron simply intends to make France the “leading country” of the European continent. To achieve this, “we are going to go from 40,000 to 100,000 researchers in AI formed” by 2030. This is the first promise of the future – and ambitious – of the President of the Republic.
Emmanuel Macron is also aware of a potential setback of the medal, and the distrust clearly displayed by the world of culture, among others. For him, “even in culture, AI can be for the right one, since it can be an instrument of creation”. The Head of State also intends to “create a framework for people who use AI”, so that they have “copyright”. “I hear this fear, I mean here that France will continue to have a clear voice, that is to say that which protects the specificity of genius, talent, recognition of rights, this property”, he explains to try to reassure skeptics.
“Revolutionary work and create new sectors”
The second fear concerns the potential destruction of jobs. Is the success of the AI conditional to the extinction of certain trades in France? According to Emmanuel Macron, artificial intelligence will rather “revolutionize the way of working”, in particular concerning professions with “very repetitive” tasks. It should make it possible to “rethink time and work planning”, and even “create new sectors”. With journalists, he also unveiled the creation of an “International Observatory on all these developments”.
The latter also tried to reassure, once again concerning the supervision of the AI, highlighting “strong principles on the protection of rights, the environment, the integrity of information, intellectual property”. A sentence should finally draw the attention of observers: “Everyone makes mistakes, what matters is to go back to combat,” said Emmanuel Macron, about innovation. Innovation you say? After a first mea culpa sketched during his wishes of January 1, 2023, concerning the dissolution of the National Assembly in 2024, the President of the Republic again seems to ask a slight forgiveness to the French, as if to relaunch a second term to say the least chaotic.