Widely thought to be a chance for the world’s governments and biggest tech players to come together and dissuade the encroaching fears around artificial intelligence, the AI Action Summit in Paris ended up taking on an entirely different feel.

While many were hoping for something of a unifying vision that could serve as an unguent to the biggest fears around AI – job losses, energy demands, climate, and data security to name a few – the two-day gathering’s over-arching theme was absolutely one of acceleration as opposed to deliberation, a far cry from the sombre offerings at Bletchley Park and Seoul.

Both Google and Mistral’s CEOs said as much without any pretence on stage, with the former’s company head, Sundar Picha, saying that the biggest risk of AI is “missing out” on it, and Mistral’s Arthur Mench saying “we need Europeans, and we need the world, to actually adopt the technology faster.”

The EU’s AI Act – which came into force last August – has faced criticism from some corners of the bloc, with the Computer & Communications Industry Association saying in a study  that the “AI Act will lead to legal uncertainty and overregulation, as well as unjustified increases in compliance cost.”

Now that the dust has settled on the two-day event, it seems that the summit was a vehicle to double-down on AI, as opposed to any kind of real introspection with regards to its dangers.

Whatever your take on AI, there was certainly plenty to mull over. Below, we’ll go through some of the biggest headlines that emerged from the event.

Macron Shares Deepfakes

French President Emmanuel Macron opened the summit with AI-generated deepfake videos of himself in popular films and TV series. 

While Macron seemed tickled by the videos and there’s no doubt the power of these tools can be astonishing – it was considered by many to be glib when considering the very real and prescient danger of deepfakes – Ofcom research published last August found that 43% of people aged 16+ say they have seen at least one deepfake online in the last six months – rising to 50% among children aged 8-15.

“President Macron’s deepfake might seem like harmless fun to promote the AI Summit in Paris, but it is not in general a good thing,” Paul McKay, principal analyst at technology consultancy Forrester, told the BBC.

“Normalising deepfakes in this way should not be encouraged as it continues the difficulty with telling what is real and what isn’t, and is ultimately helping to establish what is fact from fiction.”

EU Ramps Up Funding with €200B Investment Plan

One of the summit’s major announcements was the European Commission’s €200 billion investment in AI, with €20 billion allocated for AI gigafactories. 

The initiative, named InvestAI, aims to build large-scale AI infrastructure, positioning Europe as a global AI leader. Von der Leyen emphasised a collaborative approach, ensuring that AI development is inclusive and innovation-driven.

Announced by President Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission said that the InvestAI fund will go towards large-scale AI infrastructure projects, vital for the development of complex models that will see Europe become an ‘AI continent’.

The initiative will include a layered fund, with the EU budget in place to de-risk the investment of other partners. Initial funding for InvestAI will come from existing EU funding programmes, such as Horizon Europe, while funding of the AI gigafactories will be through a mix of grants and equity.

“We are doing this through our own European approach – based on openness, cooperation and excellent talent. But our approach still needs to be supercharged,” said von der Leyen.

“This unique public-private partnership, akin to a CERN for AI, will enable all our scientists and companies – not just the biggest – to develop the most advanced very large models needed to make Europe an AI continent.”

The EU chief told her audience at the AI summit that both public and private investment would be funnelled towards the project, with the EU set to contribute €50 billion (£41.6bn), with the rest reportedly being pledged by a collection of ‘providers, investors and industry’.

Online Child Safety Gets a Look In

The summit also saw the launch of the ROOST initiative, a nonprofit providing open-source safety tools for the AI era, particularly addressing online child safety. 

Supported by tech giants like Google, OpenAI, and Roblox, ROOST aims to provide free, open-source AI tools for detecting, reviewing, and reporting child sexual abuse material (CSAM), making core safety technologies more accessible for companies.

The initiative aims to address “a critical need to accelerate innovation in online child safety,” according to founding ROOST partner and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Details about the CSAM detection tools were fairly thin on the ground, beyond that they will utilise large language AI models and “unify” existing options for dealing with the content.

“Starting with a platform focused on child protection, ROOST’s collaborative, open-source approach will foster innovation and make essential infrastructure more transparent, accessible, and inclusive, with the goal of creating a safer internet for everyone,” said Schmidt.

Regulatory Divides Emerge

The arguably biggest piece of news to emerge from the summit was that it ended with a notable divide as the UK and US declined to sign a global declaration on AI governance, leaving the two-day event without a unified international framework.

The statement, signed by dozens of countries including France, China and India, pledges an “open”, “inclusive” and “ethical” approach to the technology’s development.

US Vice President JD Vance defended the decision, warning that overregulation could “kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off.” His comments echoed broader concerns in the US, particularly following President Donald Trump’s executive order to roll back AI regulations imposed by the Biden administration.

The UK government, however, expressed different reservations. 

“The declaration didn’t provide enough practical clarity on global governance and [didn’t] sufficiently address harder questions around national security,” a UK government spokesperson stated.

Carsten Jung, head of AI at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), highlighted the multifaceted risks of unregulated AI, from enabling cyber-attacks to AI bots “running wild” online and even aiding in the creation of bioweapons. “This isn’t science fiction,” Jung warned, when speaking to Sky News.

Unfinished Business

It’s so hard to form cogent arguments against AI when any evidence against it from tier 1 sources is arguably as nascent as the technology itself – it could very well be that we’re currently in the nadir of its development and the technology will eventually lead us to a better place than we’re at across the board. 

The problem is that if it doesn’t, there’s plenty to suggest that it will be difficult to undo any potential harm.

AI’s potential benefits are undeniable, but the absence of clear, enforceable global safety measures casts a long shadow. While AI’s growth could lead to unprecedented advancements, the risk of harm, once done, may be irreversible.

The Paris Summit’s emphasis on action over safety left many disillusioned. Safety discussions were pushed to the margins, with French envoy Anne Bouverot dismissing existential AI risks as “science fiction.” 

Yet, empirical evidence suggests AI, when acting autonomously, can create unforeseen dangers – the final communique offered no concrete path forward for addressing these risks, prompting MIT physicist Max Tegmark to call the summit “a tremendous missed opportunity” and a “recipe for disaster,” when speaking to Fortune.

The absence of the US and UK from the final declaration, partly due to ideological divides and political posturing, underscored the fractured landscape of AI governance. While 61 nations, including China, signed on, key players like Google and OpenAI withheld their endorsements. Dario Amodei of Anthropic warned that the rapid pace of AI development demands greater urgency and global cooperation.

A $400 million foundation and a Coalition on Sustainable AI called Current AI was established, but its vague mandates left stakeholders, from climate activists to labor unions, dissatisfied. As AI becomes increasingly integrated into our lives, the question remains: Will it serve humanity’s best interests, or will unchecked ambition lead to unforeseen consequences? The Summit’s lack of commitment to AI safety may mean that only a future crisis will spur the world into action.

That aside, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that Big Tech and represented governments may as well have had sparklers and t-shirt cannons at their speeches – too much money has been invested at this point and with not enough tangible return.

We’re betting it all on AI – whether you like it or not.