The Paris summit on artificial intelligence (AI) organized by France was held on February 10 and 11, 2025. It will go down in history as a great moment of acceleration. While French civil society is organizing, particularly through the coalition Hiatus launched on the initiative of La Quadrature du Net, to resist the surge of artificial intelligence, Europe is engaging in a headlong rush which, in the current context, could precipitate us towards a kind of techno-fascism.
Emmanuel Macron was outspoken in his keynote at the end of the first day: “We want to accelerate, we want to reduce the gap”. But accelerate what, exactly?
The first acceleration promoted by AI apostles relates to the deployment of AI in public services and throughout society. Announcements in this area have been coming thick and fast in recent days: health, armed forces, education, France Travail (the French government’s employment agency)… Extending the policies of digitalization of the last twenty years following a pure logic of cost-rationalization, AI will make it possible to automate entire sections of public bureaucracies. The centerpiece of most of these partnerships, the company Mistral AI is presented as the guarantee of French and European technological sovereignty, despite the presence of a number of US players in its capital, including active supporters of Donald Trump such as Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
The next step is to accelerate investment. While the French parliament has just ratified the most austerity-driven budget in twenty-five years, billions of public and private funds are pouring into AI, particularly for data centers. François Bayrou has announced 400 million euros in subsidies for the construction of thirty-five such industrial buildings, while BPIfrance will invest 10 billion in AI companies. Not to mention the much-discussed 109 billion of private capital, including 50 billion euros invested by the United Arab Emirates for a “giant data center” and 20 billion contributed by the Canadian fund Brookfield for a similar project. Computing power is now a prime asset for tech speculators, welcomed with open arms by France.
It doesn’t matter that these huge server warehouses are already leading to protests across the country due to the conflicts of use they cause. In Marseille, for example, their explosion in recent years has led to postponement of the electrification of the docks where cruise ships stop. As a result, they continue spewing out their toxic fumes in the Saint-Antoine district. But with Emmanuel Macron as its leading sales representative, France has chosen to dismiss these objections out of hand. It is making its policy of nuclear revival a “low carbon” asset, even if it means ignoring the dangers and immense unknowns surrounding these programs.
Another major acceleration is that of deregulation policies. While Donald Trump was quick to cancel the few rules relating to AI enacted by the Biden administration, Emmanuel Macron and Ursula Von der Leyen, the president of the EU Commission, seem in turn determined to trim the few principles laid down by the “AI Act” recently adopted by the European Union. The French president has turned the mantra of disruption into his own: “If we regulate before we innovate, we will cut ourselves off from innovation”. It does not matter that the AI Act – full of exceptions and enacting a system of self-regulation under the aegis of the tech industry – has been denounced by NGOs. Faced with the injunction to deploy AI on a massive scale in society, human rights are paying the price. The US Vice-President, the techno-reactionary JD Vance, made no secret of his satisfaction: “I like to see that deregulatory flavor making its way into a lot of conversations,” he said in his address.
If there is one area where these deregulation policies are particularly eagerly awaited, it is that of data centers. “I have received the message from investors,” said Emmanuel Macron, promising to “simplify red-tape.” A promise that has already been translated into legislation, notably with the draft law on the simplification of economic life. Currently debated by the French National Assembly, it aims to circumvent local urban planning or environmental protections. As for the requests made by the National Commission for Public Debate to be competent ahead of the construction of these energy-consuming infrastructures, they come up against the government’s determination to exclude the body from a growing number of industrial projects. Not only is AI imposed in the workplace in complete disrespect of social rights, its infrastructures are being forced upon us at the price of an overt denial of democracy.
At the summit, the passing references to a “humanist” artificial intelligence did not fool anyone. European leaders claim to be charting an alternative while engaging in a mimetic rivalry with China and the United States – a harbinger of techno-fascism. In doing so, they are locking us into a technological headlong rush that is completely unsustainable in ecological terms, but also politically disastrous. Accelerating, whatever the cost. Even if it means crashing into the wall.