AFP, PARIS
Europe’s biggest tech trade fair Vivatech opened its doors yesterday in Paris, putting US billionaire Jeff Bezos front and center as enthusiasm for generative artificial intelligence (AI) rubs shoulders with anxiety about the continent’s technological dependence.Talk of securing access to AI would be on the agenda in the French capital and at the G7 summit in Evian. Washington last week banned non-American users from Anthropic PBC’s powerful AI models Fable and Mythos.In a sign of how seriously the move jarred transatlantic ties, France and Vivatech’s guest nation Germany issued a joint statement as the fair opened, offering a “shared vision for strengthening Europe’s digital sovereignty.”
Visitors walk through the stands at the VivaTech technology startups and innovation fair in Paris on June 11, last year.
Aimed at Brussels and fellow EU member states, the declaration announced the creation of the “Franco-German Forum for the Future.”The platform aims to link up the two countries’ private and public-sector tech efforts, including tallying up local alternatives to foreign digital services and creating an “evaluation framework for Europe’s critical digital dependencies.”
Amazon.com Inc founder Bezos said on stage yesterday that AI would lead to labor shortages, not the replacement of humans. He was speaking about his new AI start-up Prometheus, which is aimed at speeding up physical manufacturing.Also joining about 15,000 start-ups showing off their inventions until Saturday would be French researcher Yann LeCun, who made waves this year with a new company focused on physical AI after leaving Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms Inc.Other top guests include the head of Dutch tech heavyweight ASML Holding NV, whose ultraviolet lithography machines are indispensable to advanced chipmaking.Fans of AI automation might be more excited by the appearance today of Peter Steinberger, the Austrian creator of the open-source AI agent OpenClaw that took Silicon Valley by storm earlier this year.Bringing together founders, investors, industry associations and national delegations, Vivatech is a hive of activity every year.Organizers have expanded this year’s event to 70,000m2 from its usual 50,000 and visitor numbers could top last year’s record of 180,000.Further highlighting the tech sovereignty debate, French Minister of Finance Roland Lescure was to meet local firm ChapsVision at Vivatech.The company has been chosen to replace the US data sifting giant Palantir Technologies Inc on a major contract for France’s DGSI domestic intelligence agency, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced on Tuesday.“We cannot accept new strategic dependencies in the digital realm,” Lecornu said.Palantir has insisted that its contract is still in force, with the French government saying it wanted to avoid any gap in service while ChapsVision is brought aboard — without saying when the migration would be complete.With Germany as the guest of honor this year, more than 200 start-ups from across the Rhine would be in Paris for the fair’s 10th anniversary edition.“In a time of growing technological and global fragmentation, this spotlight underscores Europe’s ambition to affirm its sovereignty and take the lead in innovation,” organizers said.
