It is simplistic to dismiss the outcomes of the Paris AI Action Summit as underwhelming or disappointing. Yes, the US and the UK declined to sign the final statement, underscoring the challenges in achieving a global consensus on AI governance. But this was not unexpected and aligns with Trump’s ‘America-first’ policy. US Vice President JD Vance said as much, “The United States of America is the leader in AI, and our administration plans to keep it that way.”
It is concerning that the only agreement between the US and China, the world’s foremost leaders in AI today, is that the decision to use nuclear weapons should be under human control, not AI.
Unlike the previous two summits in Seoul and the UK, the Paris Summit’s final document is a humble ‘Statement’, not a grand ‘Declaration’. The reduced scope and scale of the ambition should not distract us from the fine print that the summit was able to negotiate and advocate for quietly.
The Paris Summit shifted away from the previous summits’ focus on AI safety and risks. While necessary to mitigate AI’s potentially catastrophic implications, the sole emphasis on safety’s role in avoiding harm was abstract and allowed free rein for doomsday thinking that was counterproductive to the credibility of the Seoul and especially the Bletchley Summit.
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