#FirstpostNews: Macron Speaks at India AI Summit, Urges Social Media Ban for Under-15s | N18L

It is my profound honor now to invite

honorable president of France, his

excellency Emanuel Mccron to address the

August gathering. Let's extend a warm

and respectful welcome to his excellency

Emanuel Mcron.

Mr. Prime Minister Dearendra Modi,

head of state and government, ministers,

ambassadors, CEOs, ladies and gentlemen.

Namaste.

Thank you very much for welcoming us in

this magnificent city, in this

magnificent country. And it's great to

be back after my 2024 state visit for

this artificial intelligence impact

summit hosted by you, Mr. Prime

Minister. And I I want to start with a

story.

10 years ago,

a street vendor in Mumbai

could not open a bank account.

No address, no papers, no access.

And today the same vendor accepts

payments on his phone instantly.

Instantly for free from anyone in the

country. That is not just a tech story.

That is a civilization story.

And India built something that no other

country in the world has built. A

digital identity for 1.4 billion people.

A payment system that now processes 20

billion transactions every month. A

health infrastructure that has issued

500 million digital health IDs.

Here are the results. They call it

the India stack open interoperable

sovereign.

That dear friends is what this summit is

about. We are clearly at the beginning

of a huge acceleration and you perfectly

described it during your interventions.

But let me just recap. During one year

what happened last year when France and

India co-hosted the AI action summit in

Paris, we set a global guiding principle

for a technology that would transform

our societies and our economies. We say

then artificial intelligence will be an

enabler for our humanity to innovate

faster to to disrupt healthcare, energy,

mobility, agriculture, public services

for the good of mankind.

Both of us we do believe in this

revolution.

One year ago, the landscape started to

shift. The US announced Stargate. China

launched Deep Seek. AI has become a

major field of strategic competition and

big tech got even bigger and some a lot

of them are in this room and still

accelerated during the last year. AI GPU

cheap tensions are now directly

translated in geopolitical and

macroeconomic terms.

Sometime for the best, sometime for the

worst I have to say. But clearly one

year ago we demonstrated something else.

A Germany from any quarter is not a

fatality.

There is a path for innovation,

independence and strategic autonomy. And

this path I'm convinced is one of the

countries like France and India must

take together

and we have already achieved a lot.

If we speak about models, you perfectly

describe the acceleration and the

diversity of this model. India made a

deliberate sovereign choice SML small

language models

task specific designed to run on a

smartphone and India built the first

government founded AI and deployed

38,000 GPUs at the cheapest rates to

every startup in the country as you

perfectly described Mr. Minister,

we took a complimentary path. We

invested in European large large

language models. Mistral founded in

Paris a little bit more than two years

ago

is now valued at 12 billion euro backed

by Dutch leader SML, German SAP and

French CMS GM serving over hundreds of

major clients all over the place in

Europe and elsewhere.

They announced last week a new

investment in data center in in Sweden

and a new acquisition of COB building an

actual European AI cloud.

India chose granular and smart and

Europe chose sovereign and scaled but

both chose independence and both were

right and this is as well the

cooperation with LLMs

coming from the US and through

cooperation but cooperation based on

mutual respect and independence which

could pave the way for progress

after the model of the infrastructure

you just described all the

infrastructure made by a lot of large

companies in India and all of us we are

building new infrastructure computing

capacity. One year ago in Paris, we

announced 109 billion dollars in AI

investment and we are delivering this

project with a lot of data centers 58

billion euro in 2025 powered by our

decarbonated nuclear energy with a great

asset and this is very important indeed

to have low carbon and available energy.

Last year, France exported 90 terowatt

hour of lowcarbon

energy and pilotable energy, which is a

huge opportunity to build faster and

bigger data center. At the European

level, 200 billion euro have been

committed with the arrival of the

Alisraok exascale supercomput key

component of our AI factory ambition

shared with Netherland and Greece and we

share the computer with them

models infrastructure talents. India

trains hundreds of thousands of AI

engineers every year.

With 500,000 engineers, India has the

second largest developer community in

the world. In France, we are doubling

the number of AI scientists and

engineers trained. And with now more

than 1100 AI startups thriving in

France, creating dozens thousands of

jobs.

Armaton AI partnering with doium

for voice AI poolside ash hugging face.

I could quote the ris of this unicorns

and large caps and this is clearly one

of our strengths in quantum computing

the next frontier. France is not placing

one bet. We are placing four. Four

technologies, four French companies,

Pascal, Pandela, Addison, Bob, Quabi.

And one ambition to make Europe a

quantum power

which is also the ambition of Ammy Labs,

advanced machine intelligence labs from

our dear Yanl for frontier research.

The smartest AI is not the most

expensive.

It is the one built by the best people

and for the right purpose

models,

infrastructure, talents, capital and

adoption. This is where the Indian model

is truly revolutionary. providing

solutions for everyone in the country

from 200 million of Indian farmers in

their own dialect to travel advice for

400 million of pilgrims

or AI diagnostics for rural clinics all

running on India's digital public

infrastructure open rails

near zero cost adoption is key and being

inclusive is key in Europe our AI factor

is optimize energy grids, transform

logistics, reinvent healthcare

administration, and we are proving you

can build a competitive AI industry

while protecting your citizens data. And

opposite to what some misinformed

friends have been saying, Europe is not

blindly focused on regulation. Europe is

a space for innovation and investment,

but it is a safe space,

and safe spaces win in the long run. I'm

sure of that.

Now the point of this summit was not

only to say let's do more. It was to say

let's do better together.

AI may be a powerful accelerator of

productivity and a major shift for labor

markets.

This is why access to AI for all is

critical.

France and India share a common vision.

a sovereign AI used to protect our

planet and to foster prosperity for all

in health. We launched the in the indoor

French institute for AI in health. A

partnership between Sburn's brain

institute and MS Delhi and the

partnership between Ash and Sanjun

research institute in Bangalore will use

AI to transform hospital administration

as well. in language. We jo we jointly

launched current AI for sustainable and

sovereign access and this year we

announced an open hardware tool for

translation into Indian languages and

dialects because AI

that doesn't understand dialects is not

AI for all and this is why we do endorse

this initiative for diversity in

language

in sustainability.

Our coalition for sustainable AI now has

more than 200 supporters.

Today with India and UNESCO we launch an

international challenge for sustainable

AI models.

Last year in Paris we called it action.

This year in Delhi we call it impact.

But the real name is simpler. AI

together.

AI and digitalization

will be a key theme for the months to

come and a key theme for the Africa

forward summit we will cause with Kenya

and Nairobi in May. The continent, the

African continent with the youngest

population that will double in 25 years

deserves the best digital tools. And at

a time when tensions are ra rising,

there is an increased sense of urgency

to direct all our digital tools towards

this inclusive approach and in order

indeed to be strong here in India but to

be strong as well on the African

continent and let's focus all together

towards bridging rather than dividing,

creating rather than destroying, sharing

rather than taking.

France intends to use its G7 presidency

to foster that vision. I know Mr. Prime

Minister that India will do the same

through your bricks presidency.

No country is bound to serve only as a

market where foreign companies sell

their models and download the citizens

data. No country.

One of our G7 priorities will be as well

children's protection against AI and

digital abuse. You just mentioned it,

Mr. Secretary General. There is no

reason our children should be exposed

online to what is legally forbidden in

the real world.

Our platforms, governments, and

regulators should be working together to

make internet and social media a safe

space.

This is why in France we are embarking

on a process to ban social networks for

children under 15 years old

and we are committed here in this

journey with a lot of several European

countries being present here today.

Greece, Spain,

I know Mr. Prime Minister, you will you

will join this club and this is a great

news that India will join such an

approach in order to protect child,

children and teenagers.

And we stand ready to take all necessary

actions to ensure that our young

citizens are truly safe and wish to

engage with all willing partners to make

this vision happen for all. And this is

a new coalition of willings in order to

protect our children and teenager.

Protecting our children is not

regulation as well. It is civilization.

To conclude, the message I have come to

convey is what is that we we are

determined to continue to shape the

rules of the game

and to do with our allies such as India

because we believe in core shared

values, science, rule of law, global

balance, efficient multilateralism,

innovation for the benefit of all.

Now is the time to channel our forces

toward what what works. Concrete action

and solutions that make AI more

sustainable, efficient, and accessible.

Targeted funding to leverage talents and

creativity.

Appropriate rules to prevent abuse and

protect all our citizens. Strong

partnerships that help build new AI

solutions

more safe and more sustainable.

I want to thank all the governments and

business leaders present in this room

and engage in this journey. I know your

goodwill and your commitment in order to

deliver this concrete results. We do

believe in innovation but we do believe

in a better place in a better world as

well. And I don't believe one second

it's uncompatible.

And let me say one more thing about

partnerships because this is not a

two-player game.

Last week, India and the UAE announced a

joint AI partnership, a supercomputing

cluster, shared data centers and

innovation corridor. And India brings

the engineers and the frugal models and

the Gulf brings the capital and the

infrastructure and together they build

faster that Ather could alone.

France knows this equation well. With

UAE we engaged and commit they committed

billions of euro for innovation and data

centers in our country and this

partnership create more value together.

This is not dependency.

This is intelligent convergence

between governments with companies

large caps startups and this is clearly

this intelligent convergence which can

provide results. The old word said you

compete or you lose. The new world says

you connect or you fall behind.

And I started with a story about a

street vendor in Mumbai. 10 years ago,

the world told India that 1.4 billion

people could not be brought into the

digital economy.

India proved them wrong.

Today, some say AI is a game only the

biggest can play. That you need $400

billion dollars to be in the race. That

nothing can exist between the two

blocks. India, France, Europe, together

with our partners, those who believe in

our approach, companies, governments,

investors might have a different way.

The money race is important and we

cannot discount it. But the outcomes and

real value creation for our population

is even more.

The future of AI will be built by those

who combine innovation and

responsibility,

technology with humanity.

And India and France will help to shape

this future together. And the journey

has just begun.

Jho,

thank you.

Thank you his excellency Manuel Mccron

for your visionary address and for

strengthening the spirit of

international cooperation in shaping the

AI type.