Breathe
By Thelma Elena Pérez Álvarez
The Action Summit on Artificial Intelligence (AI) took place on February 10 and 11 in Paris. The event, co-chaired by France and India, was billed as "A European Awakening" and followed up on pacts established at the Bletchley Park (2023) and Seoul (2024) meetings. It was attended by heads of state and government, heads of technology companies, international organizations, academics and researchers, non-governmental organizations, and so on.
The outcome of the summit is the Declaration on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and Planet, signed by 61 states, which sets out the following six points:
- Promote the accessibility of AI to reduce digital divides.
- Ensure that AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, secure and reliable, taking into account inclusive international frameworks.
- To make AI innovation thrive, facilitating the conditions for its development and avoiding market concentration.
- Encourage the implementation of AI that contributes positively to the future of work and provides opportunities for sustainable growth.
- Making AI sustainable for people and the planet.
- Strengthen international cooperation to promote coordination in international governance.
Some of the global technology companies that participated include Meta, Google DeepMind, IBM, Discord, OpenAI and Roblox. Notable announcements included the creation of an observatory to assess the energy impact of artificial intelligence, led by the International Energy Agency (OECD) and the non-profit Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST) project by OpenAI, Google, Roblox and Discord, focused on child safety that will offer free tools sponsored by philanthropic organizations.
The summit showed part of the technological war between state representatives, governments and global technology companies to position themselves as leaders in artificial intelligence and the vulnerability of global citizens to the actions and omissions of these representatives to guarantee and respect fundamental rights in the digital era.
Hosts Emmanuel Macron and Narendra Modi presented "Champions of AI", a regulatory framework that favors innovation over risk. Meanwhile, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, announced a massive investment plan of 200 billion euros and announced Europe as the third pole in the field, behind the United States and China.
Janes Vence, U.S. Vice President, remarked on his country's leadership in AI, a situation that will continue under the Trump administration. Zhang Guoqing, Vice Premier of China, expressed openness to intergovernmental cooperation, highlighting global security and the sharing of achievements in the field.
It was also evident that state and government representatives avoided addressing core issues related to ethics and trust, such as the risks of AI, a situation that raises concerns about the gap between the capacity for government action and expert warnings.
For example, experts critical of the summit consider that the agreements reached are insufficient to respond to the safe and sustainable development of artificial intelligence technologies.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, stated that the summit "was a missed opportunity" because the advancement of AI presents urgent global challenges that require clear and swift action. Nick Moës, executive director of The Future Society, stressed the need to "see stronger international efforts" for citizen protection against systemic risks and harms generated by AI.
For its part, Amnesty International remarked that the use of AI technologies presents important challenges, including the need for governments to prevail over the interests of large transnational technology companies and the obligation of States to address and report on the serious human rights consequences of the operation of these technologies, such as the autonomous weapons systems, facial recognition used for mass surveillance, the use of risk scoring algorithms in migration contexts and in the distribution of social benefits, among others.
The same organization warns about the urgency of reviewing the role of large technology companies in the weakening of democracy from the activity of predictive algorithms in combination with the recent global rollback of civil liberties, a situation that threatens to allow technology companies to operate without rules and guidelines.
Regarding the above, it is important to mention two significant absences at the summit: Liang Wenfeng, founder of DeepSeek, direct competitor of the AI model created by Silicon Valley, and Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, main representative of techno feudalism and current head of the Department of Government Efficiency of Donald Trump's administration.
Also, the representatives of the United States and the United Kingdom did not sign the declaration. The former argued: "Excessive regulation could slow down the growing sector", and the latter, expressed the lack of practical clarity on global governance, nor "address the most difficult issues related to security and challenges of AI in this area".
The next summit will be in India; in the meantime, we will see who rules in the technological war for AI leadership and what happens to democracy, guaranteeing and respecting the fundamental rights of global citizenship in the digital age.
*Lecturer in digital communication, advertising and marketing at universities in Spain and Mexico. Actively works for the Mexican State to guarantee the human right to media and information literacy.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
Comments ()