Why The Paris AI Summit Was Far More About Politics Than Technology

-Analysis-

PARIS – Better get used to it, the United States is going its own way. The final declaration of the Paris AI summit was the first international document drafted since Donald Trump returned to the White House. And the United States refused to sign it. So did the United Kingdom, but no one seems to know why.

The final document of an international conference is usually hammered out over weeks by the diplomats and experts. By the time the summit rolls around, only a few “bracketed” sections — points on which consensus could not be achieved — remain, with the hope that the heads of state and government will manage to overcome them.

But the U.S. delegation, led by Vice President JD Vance, refused to back this commitment to a “sustainable and inclusive artificial intelligence.” There’s the wording, out of step with the Trump administration’s vocabulary; and the overall philosophy. In a blunt speech, Vance warned Europe against what he called its “excessive” regulation of technology and cautioned against the temptation of working with China. The problem isn’t the language — it’s the worldview.

The regulation question

This comes as no surprise, as the issue of tech regulation lies at the heart of the divide between the United States and Europe. Trump’s closeness with the bosses of American tech giants, the “oligarchy” — to borrow a term from Joe Biden’s farewell address — makes this issue central to the U.S. worldview.

International negotiations are also being “polluted” by the China-U.S. rivalry.

We can therefore expect strong tensions between Washington and Brussels over the EU rules that have come into force in recent months and years, and which are frustrating Silicon Valley. Europe is going to find it hard to resist American blows: Washington’s refusal to sign the Paris declaration is just a taste of what’s to come.

But the stakes are much larger. The Trump administration is tossing out the multilateral diplomacy — i.e. negotiations among different partners — that has been carefully put in place since the end of the World War II. It favors the law of the strongest, and therefore its own laws.

International cooperation

Trump has already ripped up the Paris Agreement on climate change, withdrawn the U.S. from the World Health Organization, sanctioned judges from the International Criminal Court, dismantled the U.S. humanitarian aid agency (USAID), and boycotted the U.N. Human Rights Council — and this is just the beginning. The world as we know it is unraveling before our eyes, and it will be a serious test to survive without the United States.

International negotiations are also being “polluted” by the China-U.S. rivalry. In response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement at the summit on Monday, where he expressed a desire to work with everyone on AI, including China, the U.S. vice president issued a sharp warning yesterday about Beijing, but without directly naming China.

On Monday evening, at the official dinner at the Élysée presidential palace, Vance stood up and left the room just before Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing took the floor. Yesterday, he spoke about authoritarian systems “that infiltrate you and steal your information.” At the Paris Summit, there was the grand utopia of AI serving humanity; and there was the reality of today’s conflicts, with or without artificial intelligence.