Paris AI Summit 2025: 5 Critical Themes Shaping Global AI Policy – Forbes

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The Paris AI Action Summit tackles five key themes: public interest AI, jobs, investment, ethics, and regulation. With further announcements of AI investments underway, the summit aims to move from safety talks to action.

Third Time’s the Charm? The Paris AI Action Summit marks the third major international gathering dedicated to Artificial Intelligence, bringing together world leaders, tech CEOs, and civil society representatives. The clue is in the name — it has evolved from the ‘AI Safety Summit’ to the ‘AI Summit,’ and now the ‘AI Action Summit,’ shifting the focus from theoretical safety concerns to implementation. Moving from the UK’s Bletchley Park to Seoul, and now to Paris, the discussions have grown more concrete. The five themes of this summit are likely to resonate in future gatherings and shape the global AI discourse for years to come.

AI in the Public Interest – Competition and Investment

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to drive medical breakthroughs, optimize energy use, and revolutionize access to education and knowledge, according to Czech President Peter Pavel’s keynote at the AI Summit. Yet, beyond notable successes like AlphaFold, universally agreed-upon “AI for good” use cases remain scarce. The private sector dominates development, raising concerns about who truly benefits.

Without intervention, AI is likely to widen the gap between those who control the technology and those who merely use it. The current trajectory risks concentrating power in a small number of private actors, threatening national sovereignty in AI leadership, according to Le Monde. France is proposing a global platform to incubate public interest AI projects with independent, open-access, and sovereign AI solutions.

The challenge persists: How can collaborative public-private partnerships drive real-world “public AI’’ applications?

The Future of Work

AI will affect almost 40% of jobs worldwide, replacing some while complementing others, according to the IMF. Its impact will depend on whether AI augments high-income workers or displaces lower-skilled ones. Reskilling and upskilling efforts remain uneven, leaving many workers as passive subjects rather than active participants in AI’s evolution, warns Nabiha Syed, Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation.

Research indicates that even traditionally “safe” professions are now vulnerable due to generative AI. Policymakers must promote workforce adaptability and incentivize education programs to equip future generations with AI literacy, suggests Ms Syed. Some argue open-source AI could democratize access and level the playing field.

Considering these challenges, stakeholders must address the following questions: How can workers in AI-vulnerable occupations be reskilled to adapt to technological advancements? What policies can governments implement to mitigate the negative impacts of AI on employment? How can businesses leverage AI to enhance productivity without exacerbating unemployment?

The Promotion of AI Innovation (that Respects Cultural Diversity)

The global AI arms race is rapidly intensifying as the Summit progresses. Chinese AI startup DeepSeek recently shocked the market with its R1 large language model, performing at the level of OpenAI and Google’s offerings at a fraction of the cost. While the US leads AI investment, Europe trails behind, with VC funding in AI and ML amounting to just $15.8 billion in 2024, compared to nearly $100 billion in North America, according to the PitchBook report.

On the eve of the Summit, France has pledged €109 billion for AI development in a bid to position itself as a distinct AI player. Meanwhile, a coalition of global investors has announced €150 billion in AI funding in Europe, contingent on Europe adopting a more transparent and competitive AI framework.

On February 6, the United Arab Emirates announced between €30 billion and €50 billion of investment in a data center campus that would be the largest in Europe, as part of an AI partnership agreement signed with France.

Against this backdrop, several questions demand attention: Who will out-invest whom in the global AI race? How will the broader AI ecosystem respond to US and Chinese AI dominance?

The Ethics and Reliability of AI Technologies

Previous AI Summits led to the Frontier AI Safety Commitments, a non-binding minimum standard for AI developers, setting risk thresholds for AI systems. Since then, governments have been scaling safety testing, with AI Safety Institutes emerging across various geographies.

Yet, concerns persist over whether AI safety tools are being widely adopted to counterbalance the AI arms race. The debate continues between addressing immediate AI risks versus long-term concerns like artificial general intelligence (AGI).

As these discussions unfold, several key questions emerge: Are AI safety tools being adopted at a scale sufficient to keep pace with the AI arms race? Can the Summit build on the previous Frontier AI Safety Commitments to enforce stronger safeguards?

Establishing International Standards for AI Regulation

AI governance remains fragmented, with no unified global framework. While the EU is already on the path of implementing regulations such as the AI Act—banning social scoring and AI-driven manipulation—global oversight is still lacking.

The Paris Summit is expected to push for multilateral cooperation, particularly on AI’s environmental impact. As the first provisions of the EU AI Act took effect on February 2, discussions will likely focus on harmonizing regulatory efforts and addressing broader challenges like safety, ethics, competition, data protection, and military applications.

These developments raise critical questions: Can existing initiatives, such as the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), be coordinated to create an inclusive global governance system? Will the Summit result in a multilateral agreement on AI’s environmental impact?

Third Time’s The Charm?

The Paris AI Summit raises many questions, but will it deliver concrete outcomes? Will governments and corporations commit to public-interest AI? Will workforce reskilling efforts be scaled up? Will Europe’s AI investments match the ambitions of the U.S. and China? And critically—will these same questions dominate the next AI summit?

Hopefully, we will find out soon.