Portugal Colonial - Scientists' conference kicks off global AI summit in Paris

Thousands are expected for the event aiming to find common ground on a technology that has upset many business sectors in less than two years -- as well as to keep France and Europe on the map as credible contenders in the AI race.

Scientists including Yann LeCun, AI chief for Facebook owner Meta, will discuss its impact on fields including work, health and sustainability from Thursday at the prestigious Polytechnique engineering school.

The Frenchman, one of the fathers of the current wave of AI, and 20 other high-profile researchers dined with Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, the French president's Elysee Palace office said.

Saturday and Sunday will see talks on AI's impact on culture before heads of state and government from around 100 countries and global tech industry leaders gather on Monday and Tuesday.

- DeepSeek invited -

High-profile attendees will include US Vice President JD Vance, China's Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is co-hosting the summit as Macron seeks to involve the Global South in a technology battle that is for now largely playing out between the United States and China.

From the business side, X and Tesla chief Elon Musk has yet to confirm attendance -- as has Liang Wengfeng, founder of Chinese startup DeepSeek, which shocked the world with its frugal, high-performance R1 model last week.

American figures such as OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, as well as Arthur Mensch of French AI developer Mistral, will all join the gathering.

In science, Meta's LeCun will be be flanked by the likes of Demis Hassabis, the Nobel chemistry prize-winning head of Google's DeepMind AI research lab, and Berkeley machine learning researcher Michael Jordan.

Three more Nobel winners -- computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, journalist Maria Ressa and economist Joseph Stiglitz -- will join a conference hosted by the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI (IASEI), created only last year.

- French AI efforts -

France hopes that the conference can reinforce its leading European position in AI, having already drawn several labs from leading AI firms to Paris, including Google, Meta and OpenAI.

The Polytechnique school has been singled out to host the scientific conference as a symbol of French excellence in the field.

"This summit has to be a moment to position Paris as the global capital of AI," digital minister Clara Chappaz told AFP journalists.

After a month in which DeepSeek's emergence shocked even Silicon Valley titans and the United States announced a $500-billion AI investment scheme, France and Europe have a lot to prove in the coming days.

Paris plans to announce major investments running into the billions, including for new data centres on its territory.

C.Cassis--PC