French President backs PM Modi on fair access to AI

Feb 11, 2025

Paris [France], February 11 : French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday in his address to the AI Action Summit praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi while talking about access to Artificial Intelligence.
President Macron emphasised the critical need for trust in Artificial Intelligence for its success, echoing the summit's focus on ethical AI development and global governance.
"First, you have to have fair and open access, and the question of access is of decisive importance. We need to have wide-ranging access, and we've seen this internationally with players from Asia Pacific, Latin America, and other regions of the world, and we need to have access for all continents and all countries. And we've seen this with Prime Minister Modi," he said.
Macron said that the world should not be divided and people must trust artificial intelligence.
"We don't want a system of those who are in power and the rest of vessels. We want to have this serving the entire planet. And I don't believe that the world will be divided between the global north and the global south just looking at one another because if we want to have trust in artificial intelligence, we have to make sure there is equitable access to these innovations in all continents. And this is a challenge for both public authorities and the private sector," he said.
The French Prime Minister said that they must prevent a divide between generations with regards to AI.
"And of course this is a challenge in our societies too. We must not let a divide be established between the older generation, the younger generations or in certain parts of our countries," he said.
Macron also said that governments and civil societies must take action here.
"I think that the challenge we are all up against is that governments have to take action but also civil society needs to act and private enterprise does too, major investors need to too. We need to know how we can have trust in artificial intelligence and the use of because that will be the key part of its success," he said.
Macron said that the citizens must be able to trust AI, and must prevent the negative impact of it.
"Because if we can't trust it, then we would have artificial intelligence adopted around the world, spread around the world, and we'll see that in a few years' time there will be lots of our fellow citizens saying, we don't want AI in our country. It's a source of problems, a negative impact on our lives. What do we need for establishing such a climate of trust?" he said.
Macron further said that he wants the younger generations to ne trained in this field and have more positions in university and research level.
"I would say how pleasurable that this is a moment of awakening and ambition to be involved in this in Europe. We want to invest in talent, training younger generations who have more and more positions for research and at university level. We want to invest in data and the consolidation of data. And we need to have a framework for accessing the data. We want to invest in data centers. And the President of the commission announced the program for setting up a data center in Europe for public research and startups. And we announced a number of massive scale data centers funded by the private sector in France, and we made the announcement here at the summit. And the strong point here is this ability to have sustainable, low-carbon energy sources. And this is where the French model of civil nuclear power is a real strong point," he said.
Delivering his innagural address at the AI Action Summit, PM Modi had said, "AI can help transform millions of lives by improving health, education, agriculture and so much more. It can help create a world in which the journey to sustainable development goals becomes easier and faster. To do this, we must pull together resources and talent. We must develop open-source systems that enhance trust and transparency."