PARIS, France – Europe is pursuing AI innovation, technology regulation and competition with China in a very different way than the United States, French President Emmanuel Macron said this week, as the continent seeks to become the third-largest global technology power in today’s world landscape dominated by the USA and China.
“It’s crazy to have a world where the big giants only come from China and the United States,” Macron said in an exclusive interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in Paris on Tuesday.
“We need many more European big players, and I think Mistral AI can be one of them,” Macron said of France’s leading AI company. Microsoft recently invested €15 million ($16.3 million) in Mistral.
Macron also praised H, the newly formed French AI startup that announced this week that it had raised a massive $220 million in its first round of funding.
“I think it’s actually good for the U.S. ecosystem to have a very vibrant, vibrant and ambitious European ecosystem,” he said.
Macron spoke to CNBC as technology leaders descended on Paris for the VivaTech conference. On Tuesday, the Elysee Palace hosted a group of business leaders and engineers in the field of AI on the eve of the event.
The meetings followed a wave of new private investment in the country, led by a commitment from Microsoft of 4 billion euros, the largest amount ever given to France.
“The more AI companies choose to locate in Europe, the more European governments will find themselves in the same situation as the US and Chinese governments.”
“Our challenge for AI is to accelerate, innovate and invest, and on the other hand, regulate at scale,” he added.
The European Union is ahead of the United States in regulating artificial intelligence, passing the first major set of rules in March with the EU Artificial Intelligence Act.
Macron also defended the European Union’s strict online privacy rules and rejected the view widely held in Washington that Brussels is deliberately trying to undermine the dominant positions of US tech giants such as Google and Meta through a kind of competition-through-regulation strategy.
“I think that’s wrong,” Macron said. “If I want to give a guarantee for your privacy, the storage of your data and the view of your cloud, that is a sovereign and very important democratic matter.”
He compared allowing American tech giants to operate in Europe under U.S. rules to allowing a French bank in the United States to ignore American banking regulations.
“The point is, I don’t regulate you if you operate in the United States. However, make sure that you must respect European rules when operating on the European continent.”
When it comes to China, however, Macron indicated that he believes some U.S. technology regulations have gone too far.
He said France, for example, does not see a significant threat to national security from TikTok, the giant social media app owned by Chinese company ByteDance.
Under a recent US law passed in the name of national security, ByteDance must divest TikTok in order to continue operating on American devices.
“We have not used this approach and are neutral in terms of technology, nationality and players,” Macron said.
“Look, I think China is a competitor when you talk about trade, innovation and economics. I think it’s a shame that we should work together a lot collectively to push them to respect international rules instead of deciding ourselves not to respect them.” “We ourselves are the international rules,” he said.
“They compete and are pretty good at innovating and producing,” he said. “We have been too naive so far, and today Europe is less productive for its economies.” [than] the USA”
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2024-05-24 12:27:01
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