Top artificial intelligence executives are gathering Wednesday in France against a backdrop of growing calls for tech sovereignty in Europe, fueled by concerns about American dominance in the industry.
The wars in Iran and Ukraine have dominated discussions at the Group of Seven summit of major industrialized nations this week but AI will have its moment on the meeting’s final day.
In a rare huddle of AI industry figures, leaders of three of the most powerful AI companies — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei — are due to attend a working lunch on the theme of “Ensuring a safe, rapid and effective deployment of artificial intelligence.”
Also attending are the heads of smaller AI labs, including Canada’s Cohere AI, France’s Mistral, Germany’s Black Forest Labs, Italy’s Domyn, Sakana AI of Japan and U.K.-based Synthesia.
In Europe the distrust of American companies dominating AI and other tech ecosystems has shown up at the European Commission, which unveiled a tech sovereignty package this month with plans to boost homegrown AI, and the Vatican, where the pope last month called for robust regulation of artificial intelligence.
Many outside the United States also took notice last week when Anthropic took down its most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, to comply with a Trump administration order citing an unspecified national security concern. The U.S government barred any non-Americans, either inside or outside the United States, from accessing the models, which forced the company to suspend access to all customers.
The episode highlighted how Europe, Canada or other countries “can be put in an extremely vulnerable position” if they get cut off from advanced AI models, said Zach Meyers, director of research at CERRE, a Brussels-based think tank.
“There is a general anxiety about the state of Europe, the fact that we’re relying on other countries for quite important strategic infrastructure and a desire to do something about it, whatever that is,” Meyers said.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney touched on the Anthropic development on his way to the G7 meeting, telling reporters during a stop in Ireland that it highlights a need to “build out and diversify.”
Sovereignty requires “unhindered access to AI,” he said in a speech in Dublin.
Earlier this month, Canada announced a plan to help middle powers or like-minded countries develop an alternative to the big AI players. A few days earlier, Trump signed an executive order sketching out a framework for oversight of advanced AI systems.
The G7 is a chance for business and political leaders to engage with each other on the risks and benefits of AI, as countries seek to harness the technology to boost their economies and advance their geopolitical aims.
Digital sovereignty has been a longtime cause for the G7 meeting’s host, French President Emmanuel Macron. His government has even started requiring civil servants to ditch Zoom and Microsoft Teams for a homegrown video conference system.
Aidan Gomez, CEO of Cohere, which bought German AI startup Aleph Alpha earlier this year, said the company’s focus at the G7 was “to expand our sovereign AI ecosystem partnerships beyond Canada and Germany to include all G7 nations — and companies — establishing a global standard that guarantees ownership of models, data, and local compute.”
The G7 comprises France, the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom. Brazil, India, Kenya and South Korea were among guest nations invited to participate in some discussions.
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