French President Macron Says PM Modi Facing the Same Issue Ahead of Key AI Summit

Before Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Paris, France's President Emmanuel Macron stated that both leaders aim to advocate for tech sovereignty.

Prime Minister Modi traveled to France on Monday to co-chair the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit with French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday.

In an interview with Firstpost, Macron stated that advocating for technological sovereignty on the global stage will be a key focus for both him and PM Modi at the summit. “I think with Prime Minister Modi we firmly believe that India and France are two great powers, and we have a special relationship in respect to this. We respect and want to work with the United States, and we want to work with China but don’t want to depend on one,” the French leader said.

Partnerships in the defense sector

Macron emphasized that India and France share a robust bilateral defense partnership. He praised India as a "training superpower," noting that it produces 1 million engineers annually, which exceeds the combined total of Europe and the US. “It’s a very deep-seated conviction that we want to be independent, that doesn’t mean we want to be isolated, but we want to have technologies and partners that we can trust without dependencies,” he told Firstpost.

Sovereignty over AI technology

The French President also discussed how both France and India have advocated for strategic autonomy over the years. “India and France are leading. So we have the US and China far ahead. And then you have France, the UK, India, the UAE, and then Germany and the others. So we want to work together on AI. Prime Minister Modi is facing the same issue that all Americans and there are a few Chinese players in that space, and he wants to benefit from the innovation, but he wants it to also be happening in India,” Macron told Firstpost.

The French President stated that if there is a lack of cooperation with these key players, a nation will be forced to handle matters independently. He also pointed out how, during the Covid-19 pandemic, countries began focusing on their own needs.“If you depend on others to produce medicine and technology then things can go wrong, so we need that partnership because we have shared interest and we have the same worldview focused on friendship and interest,” he said.

The French President stated that India and France will work together to develop technological sovereignty.“We want to train our talent so that they can go abroad but they should also be at home and we can create data centres in India and France with sustainable energy and we want our own language model in France and India. We don’t want to depend on the US and the Chinese models and we want applications in all fields,” Marcon told Firstpost.

Third way forward

Macron also discussed how India and France can successfully carve out a third path in the tech race. “I believe very strongly that that is the future. That is why in 2018 I started this Indo-Pacific strategy. I’m obsessed with one thing and that is that I want our children to lead better lives than we do, and I want them to have a say in their future that is independence, that is progress for France and for Europe,” Macron said.