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At Paris AI Summit negotiations on Feb. 11, the United States and the United Kingdom declined to commit to “inclusive and sustainable” artificial intelligence, according to The Guardian. The declaration on inclusive and sustainable AI asked countries to make a non-binding pledge to make AI sustainable for people and the planet, and to “ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all.”
Australia, Canada, China, India, and Japan were among the 60 countries that signed the agreement.
Why did the US and UK decline the AI declaration?
The U.K. will “only ever sign up to initiatives that are in UK national interests,” a representative of the U.K. prime minister told the Guardian. The U.K. did sign an agreement regarding cybersecurity and agreed to participate in the summit’s Coalition for Sustainable AI.
In a speech at the AI Summit, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said Europe was leveraging “excessive regulation” regarding artificial intelligence and that the U.S. was disinclined to cooperate with China, The Guardian reported.
Vance pointed at two European regulations, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and GDPR, as disfavored. He also warned against associations with what he called “authoritarian” governments, which was a veiled reference to China.
“We need international regulatory regimes that foster the creation of AI technology rather than strangle it, and we need our European friends, in particular, to look to this new frontier with optimism rather than trepidation,” Vance said.
Paris AI Summit participants weigh innovation and regulation
The decision is part of a long-standing global effort to balance innovation and regulation of frontier technologies. President Donald Trump has pushed for U.S. AI dominance and fewer regulations than the previous administration.
On Feb. 10, French President Emmanuel Macron said France needs to “resynchronize with the rest of the world” to simplify processes that might bottleneck AI innovation.
“I agree with industries on the fact that now, we also have to look at our rules, that we have too much overlapping regulation,” said Henna Virkkunen, executive vice-president of the European Commission for technological sovereignty, security, and democracy, in an interview with Reuters on Feb. 10.
The EU’s AI Act prohibits using AI in some cases, such as social manipulation or social scoring, and divides AI use cases into categories according to potential risk. An AI Code of Practice is under review in the EU for possible finalization by May. The Code of Practice establishes responsible development and risk management principles for what the EU defines as general-purpose AI, or models that can be deployed in a wide variety of systems or applications.