What exactly is the point of the AI Action Summit?

The world’s leading minds in AI are gathering in Paris for the AI Action Summit, which kicked off on Monday. French president Emmanuel Macron is hosting the summit, which includes Vice President JD Vance among its attendees.

But the summit—which is focused on discussion and debate about the future of the technology—comes at a time when things are moving quickly in the AI space. While France’s minister for AI and digital affairs, Clara Chappaz, may want to keep the debate focused on three key objectives for the summit, covering societal and cultural, economic, and diplomatic needs, there’s much more going on at the minute.

Between Project Stargate, the U.S.’s $500 billion plan to try and corner off the development of AI and to head off the rise of China in the space, to joint ventures being brokered between Japan and OpenAI to provide proprietary platforms and models to boost businesses there, it may seem like there’s plenty of action happening outside official communiques and conferences.

And that’s before you get to the epoch-changing impact of DeepSeek’s arrival, and its R1 model’s ability to upend the economics of the generative AI revolution.

This marks the third major summit since the U.K. hosted one at Bletchley Park in November 2023. What, exactly, is the point of these discussions?

“In my opinion, this is first and foremost a diplomatic move that aims at facilitating the convergence of AI governance, generating debate on the impact of AI on societies,” says Thomas Husson, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, who is attending the summit. “It’s unlikely a major announcement will be made, but what matters here is the continuous dialogue on AI global regulation.”

But critics argue that, in a world where governments simply aren’t catching up to the private companies engaged in a relentless AI race (and where countries and private companies are striking semi-protectionist deals), “continuous dialogue” may not solve much.

“To be the architects of a positive future for AI, governments need to build out the incentives required to make sure the technology works, is safe and is trustworthy—making sure the roof doesn’t fall in on us,” says Gaia Marcus, director of the Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent research institute focused on the development of AI. “Governments also need to build and invest in alternatives that ensure the value and benefits of tech advances can be felt by everyone—and avoid paying extortionate rent to a few large companies for a generation.”

The current plan for the summit, as evidenced through a leaked draft of the summit’s pledge, doesn’t do that, Marcus says. “Based on the initial draft, we are concerned that the scaffolding provided by the official summit declaration is not strong enough,” she tells Fast Company. Those in the AI safety space fear that another milquetoast declaration does little more than provide further breathing room for big tech companies to pull away even further from regulation.

There are some strong points within the planned pledge at the end of the summit, however. “The declaration does highlight widespread consensus on key structural risks, like market concentration, labor market impacts and sustainability challenges,” Marcus adds. “But it fails to build on the mission of making AI safe and trustworthy.” 

And more broadly, it all adds up to a growing feeling of hopelessness.

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