After announcing his plans to hold a rival conference just a week later, a French billionaire has increased pressure on Rishi’s Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Xavier Niel is the co-owner and telecoms mogul of Le Monde in France. He has created a conference he calls Europe’s leading AI conference to attract AI companies to France.
The billionaire Iliad Group, sponsored by Nvidia chipmaker, will host an AI professional gathering on November 17th in Paris. This comes 15 days after UK tech leaders met at Bletchley Park for a discussion about the dangers of the new technology.
Mr Niel is an investor at Vodafone and said that he will also invest €200m in AI. This includes establishing a supercomputer, a research laboratory, and a new lab.
These plans are a direct challenge to Britain’s ambitions of becoming a global technology hub.
The British government also plans to invest in a “public AI research resource”, by spending £100m on microchips from Nvidia for future research.
Iliad’s conference at Station F, the event space in which it held its event, was “designed to become Europe’s leading annual AI events”. The conference will be centered around the latest advancements and industry use-cases.
This week, it was reported that Rishi Sunder believes we have only a “small time” to deal with the threats presented by AI.
The Bletchley Summit will be centered on the question of how to prevent AI from being misused by bad actors such as those who are trying to create bioweapons, cyber attacks or other forms of attack. The summit will also examine the risks of losing control over AI tools.
The UK’s recent focus on AI dangers has caused some concern amongst pioneers who believe that such threats are exaggerated.
Yann LeCun is the chief AI scientist for Meta, a Facebook-owned company. He said that Mr Sunak had been influenced by a “delusion” about AI.
He tweeted: “The UK PM has caught the existential, fatalistic risk of AI delusion.”
The rival conference of Mr Niel comes after a rocky start for Britain’s attempts to position itself as the global leader in AI.
Prior to this, it was reported that US Vice President Kamala Harris would be attending the summit in place of US president Joe Biden.
Paris is a hub of AI talent, and home to many of Europe’s best machine-learning startups.
Mistral, an AI company in France, raised €105m only four weeks after its founding. Poolside AI raised €118m, and moved its team to Paris from the US.
Mr Niel said to Bloomberg: “When visiting any AI lab around the world, there will always be researchers from French schools…Our challenge is to get them to stay or return if they’re abroad.”
The government spokesperson said: “The UK is hosting the first major summit on AI Safety in November. This will bring together key countries as well as leading tech companies, civil society and researchers to encourage targeted and rapid international action.
“The UK takes AI risks extremely seriously because Prime Minister May believes in its benefits. These can only be managed if countries work together to ensure AI safety.”
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