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Major world leaders are meeting for an AI summit in Paris, where challenging diplomatic talks are expected as tech titans fight for dominance in the fast-moving technology industry.Heads of state, top government officials, CEOs and scientists from around 100 countries are participating in the two-day international summit from Monday.High-profile attendees include U.S. Vice President JD Vance, on his first overseas trip since taking office, and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing.“We’re living a technology and scientific revolution we’ve rarely seen,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday on national television France 2.France and Europe must seize the opportunity because AI “will enable us to live better, learn better, work better, care better, and it’s up to us to put this artificial intelligence at the service of human beings,” he said. Vance’s debut abroad The summit will give some European leaders a chance to meet Vance for the first time. The 40-year-old vice president was just 18 months into his time as Ohio’s junior senator when Donald Trump picked him as his running mate.Vance was joined by his wife Usha and their three childrenEwan, Vivek, and Mirabelfor the trip to Europe. They were greeted in France on Monday morning by Manuel Valls, the minister for Overseas France, and the U.S. Embassy’s charge d’affaires, David McCawley.Before the trip, Vance made it clear that he intended to use the opportunity for frank discussions with European allies. “At the AI Summit, the main reason I’m going is actually to have some private conversations with the world leaders who are also going to be there,” Vance told Breitbart News. “I think there’s a lot that some of the leaders who are present at the AI summit could do to, franklybring the Russia-Ukraine conflict to a close, help us diplomatically thereand so we’re going to be focused on those meetings in France.”On Tuesday, Vance will have a working lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron, with discussions on Ukraine and the Middle East on the agenda. Vance, like the U.S. president, has questioned U.S. spending on Ukraine and the broader approach to isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Within six months of taking office, Trump promised to end the fighting.Vance also addressed what he views as a concerning trend in Europe regarding free speech, a topic he raised last year during his attendance at the Munich Security Conference.“Unfortunately, you’ve seen in Europe a really significant, and I think, frankly, an evil trend towards censorship,” he said. “And you hear a lot about America’s moral leadership. One of the things that America’s moral leadership is going to be about during President Trump’s term is free speech. We want people to be able to speak their minds, and we believe that free and open debate is actually a good thing. Unfortunately, a lot of our European friends have gone the wrong direction there.”Later this week, Vance will attend the Munich Security Conference again, where he may meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He plans to revisit themes he raised last year, including the need for NATO allies to take on a greater share of responsibility.Leaders in Europe have been carefully watching Trump’s recent statements on threats to impose tariffs on the European Union, take control of Greenland and his suggestion that Palestinians clear out of Gaza once the fighting in the Israel-Hamas conflict endsan idea that’s been flatly rejected by Arab allies. Fostering AI advances The summit, which gathers major players such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, aims at fostering AI advances in sectors like health, education, environment, and culture.A global public-private partnership named “Current AI” will be launched to support large-scale initiatives that serve the general interest.The Paris summit “is the first time we’ll have had such a broad international discussion in one place on the future of AI,” said Linda Griffin, vice president of public policy at Mozilla. “I see it as a norm-setting moment.”Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, noted an opportunity to shape AI governance in a new direction by “moving away from this concentration of power amongst a handful of private actors and building this public interest AI instead.”However, it remains unclear if the United States will support such initiatives.“There’s a lot of complicated questions to resolve” around issues like the ability to control AI systems, Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis, founder of Google’s DeepMind research lab, said. “But also I think even more complicated are maybe the geopolitical questions about things like regulation.”French organizers are also looking for the summit to ignite major investment announcements in Europe, positioning the region as a viable contender in an industry increasingly shaped by a growing U.S.-China rivalry.France plans to announce AI private investments worth a total of 109 billion euros ($113 billion) over the coming years, Macron said, presenting it as “the equivalent” of Trump’s Stargate AI data centers project.In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun expressed opposition Monday to any moves to restrict access to AI tools. The release of DeepSeek has prompted calls in the U.S. Congress to limit its use for security reasons.“We oppose drawing ideological lines and oppose overstretching national security concepts and politicizing economic and trade issues,” Guo said.He said that China advocates for open-source AI technology and promotes the accessibility of AI services to share the benefits of artificial intelligence with all countries. India’s Modi is cohosting the summit Modi is cohosting the summit with Macron in an effort to involve more global actors in AI development and prevent the sector from becoming a U.S.-China battle.India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid “perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world.”Macron will also travel on Wednesday with Modi to the southern French port city of Marseille to inaugurate an Indian Consulate there and visit the ITER nuclear research site.France has become a key defense partner for India, with talks underway on New Delhi purchasing 26 Rafale fighter jets and three Scorpene submarines. Officials in India said that discussions are at the final phase and the deal could be inked in a few weeks. Kelvin Chan in Paris, Ken Moritsugu in Beijing, and Aijaz Hussain in New Delhi, contributed to this report. Sylvie Corbet and Aamer Madhani, Associated Press
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Brendan Vaughn, editor-in-chief of Fast Company, interviews Credo AIs CEO on AI governance trends at the World Economic Forum 2025.
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The head of the U.N. AIDS agency said Monday the number of new HIV infections could jump more than six times by 2029 if American support of the biggest AIDS program is dropped, warning that millions of people could die and more resistant strains of the disease could emerge.In an interview with the Associated Press, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said HIV infections have been falling in recent years, with just 1.3 million new cases recorded in 2023, a 60% decline since the virus peaked in 1995.But since President Donald Trump’s announcement the U.S. would freeze all foreign assistance for 90 days, Byanyima said officials estimate that by 2029, there could be 8.7 million people newly infected with HIV, a tenfold jump in AIDS-related deathsto 6.3 millionand an additional 3.4 million children made orphans.“We will see a surge in this disease,” Byanyima said, speaking from Uganda. “This will cost lives if the American government doesn’t change its mind and maintain its leadership,” she said, adding that it was not her place to criticize any government’s policy.Byanyima pleaded with the Trump administration not to abruptly cut off funding, which she said has resulted in “panic, fear, and confusion” in many of the African countries hardest hit by AIDS.In one Kenyan county, she said 550 HIV workers were immediately laid off, while thousands of others in Ethiopia were terminated, leaving health officials unable to track the epidemic.She noted that the loss of U.S. funding to HIV programs in some countries was catastrophic, with external funding, mostly from the U.S., accounting for about 90% of their programs. Nearly $400 million goes to countries like Uganda, Mozambique, and Tanzania, she said.“We can work with (the Americans) on how to decrease their contribution if they wish to decrease it,” she said. Byanyima described the American withdrawal from global HIV efforts as the second biggest crisis the field has ever facedafter the yearslong delay it took for poor countries to get the lifesaving antiretrovirals long available in rich countries.Byanyima also said the loss of American support in efforts to combat HIV was coming at another critical time, with the arrival of what she called “a magical prevention tool” known as lenacapavir, a twice-yearly shot that was shown to offer complete protection against HIV in women, and which worked nearly as well as for men.Widespread use of that shot, in addition to other interventions to stop HIV, could help end the disease as a public health problem in the next five years, Byanyima said.She also noted that lenacapavir, sold as Sunlenca, was developed by the American company Gilead.International aid, Byanyima said, “helped an American company to innovate, to come up with something that will pay them millions and millions, but at the same time prevent new infections in the rest of the world.” The freeze in American funding, she said, didn’t make economic sense.“We appeal to the U.S. government to review this, to understand that this is mutually beneficial,” she said, noting that foreign assistance makes up less than 1% of the overall U.S. budget. “Why would you need to be so disruptive for that 1%?”Byanyima said that so far, no other countries or donors have stepped up to fill the void that will be left by the loss of American aid, but that she plans to visit numerous European capitals to speak with global leaders.“People are going to die because lifesaving tools have been taken away from them,” she said. “I have not yet heard of any European country committing to step in, but I know they are listening and trying to see where they can come in because they care about rights, about humanity.” The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Maria Cheng, AP Medical Writer
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