France is organizing the summit for action on artificial intelligence on February 10 and 11, 2025. Last November, the Élysée tried to draw up the contours – still a little vague – of this event. “On the method, it is a summit which will be, and which is already in the construction, very inclusive and very multi-actor”, then promised the Élysée. However, the objective is clearer: to go further than the two previous international events which took place respectively at Bletchley Park (November 2023) and Seoul (May 2024).
Today, we now know a little more thanks to the light provided by Clara Chappaz, Minister Delegate in charge of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Affairs after the last Council of Ministers. “This summit will be an opportunity to recall France's attractiveness in AI since the launch of the first national AI strategy in 2018 by the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron and to reaffirm Paris' place as the world capital of a Ethical, inclusive and more sober AI”, she promises.
A co-presidency with India, a thousand participants expected
“It will be co-chaired with India. It will be accompanied by a real AI week which will bring together leaders from around the world, from governments, civil society, research and business, and this in all areas of application”, she assures.
The exchanges will begin on February 6 during the scientific days organized by Inria and the Polytechnic Institute. The general public will be associated with this news during the “cultural weekend” which will take place at the national library of France and at the conciergerie on February 8 and 9. The summit itself will bring together a thousand international participants on February 10 at the Grand Palais around round tables and demonstrations of AI use cases.
Finally, February 11 will be devoted to the plenary session which will bring together heads of state and government as well as certain representatives of civil society, concluding this week. At the same time, events on AI will take place on the sidelines of the summit, including a business day dedicated to companies supported by Bpifrance, France Digitale, Numeum and Station F which will host this gathering.
CEO of AI start-ups and Nobel Prize winners meet
The most juicy information is certainly the guest list. “A number of big names in AI have already confirmed their attendance,” indicates Clara Chappaz. We will therefore find Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, Arthur Mensch, director of Mistral AI, or even its German equivalent, Alep Alpha. Business leaders will also be present: Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture, Mitchell Baker, CEO of Mozilla, Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal and Brad Smith, chairman of Microsoft.
-Finally, several Nobel Prize winners, including Demis Hassabis, also head of Google DeepMind, 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry – hailed for his work predicting the structure of proteins – and Daron Acemoglu, 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics The latter also shared the prize with Simon Johnson and wrote with him a book on the conditions allowing technological progress to benefit everyone.
A taste of the summit in Davos
In her speech, the delegate minister made a point of recalling that “this summit is a summit for action. It will highlight concrete and operational innovations in areas such as health, education, climate and even Defense“.
In the meantime, it is a safe bet that Emmanuel Macron will not fail to push the subject of AI on the table during the World Economic Forum which is being held in Davos from January 20 to 24. During the 54e edition of the summit, he invited a number of start-ups, notably AI, to make the trip, like Dust, Giskard, Mistral AI or even WhiteLab Genomics, and TheraPanacea. It's quite simple: AI is on everyone's lips, and will be for a long time to come.
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