Macron takes swipe at Trump with ‘plug, baby, plug’ comment at AI summit – Europe live

Finally, Macron turns to adoption and acceleration of the technology, as he promises that France will move fast with its proposals in this area.

He declares Europe is (thanks to France obviously) “back in the race” with the US and China with the pledges of €109bn of investment, but calls for “more Europe” and a more coordinated European approach to AI.

It’s a wake up call for your European strategy. Tomorrow [European Commission] president Van der Leyen will announce the European AI strategy, and it will be a very important occasion.

This strategy will be a unique opportunity for Europe to accelerate, to simplify our regulations, to deepen the single market and to invest as well in computing capacities. We need more Europe, and we have to provide a bigger domestic market to all the startups when they start as Europeans.

He also calls for a more streamlined approach to “permitting, authorisation, clinical trials” to help with timing of investments.

“We will have more private investment, … more public investment, … new strategies, but most of the time we are too slow,” he says as he promises ““the Notre Dame de Paris strategy” for more permissive regulation.

“We [want to] show the rest of the world that when we commit to a clear timeline we can deliver. You decide, you streamline all the procedures, somebody is in charge, and you deliver,” he says.

“Long live the AI, long live the Republic, long live France,” he concludes the speech.

Macron also urges Europeans to “buy European” to support French and European companies.

Here is what he said:

Having more and more cooperation between our large corporat[ion]s and this innovation is very important, and this is why I do urge European players to buy European.

Not because we don’t want to buy American or Asian, I want to reassure you.

But guess what? When you are in the US and China or India, when you have a very good solution made at home, you prefer this one to the other one. And this is a good reflex. Having this ecosystem is very important.

Macron says that France is uniquely positioned to work with American and Asian partners to manufacture chips in Europe and to service data centers in France with low carbon energy as it produces “more than what we use.”

I have a good friend in the other part of the ocean saying ‘drill, baby, drill’. Here there is no need to drill.

It’s ‘plug, baby, plug’. Electricity is available, you can plug [it in], it’s ready.

He also says that France has lots of talent as it trains 40,000 data specialists a year, and this number will go up to 100,000 a year.

Speaking at the end of Day 1, Macron says he wants to make a case for investment in AI in France and Europe.

He says the summit focuses on using the AI as an “enabler for humanity to go faster, to innovate and to disrupt in health care, energy, mobility, public services.”

He also says the summit is a sign of belief “in this revolution and our capacity to work” together, with the US, China, India and the rest of the world.

He says that many topics from Day 1, including on regulation, will be picked up at the leaders’ summit on Tuesday.

…and there he is!

French president Emmanuel Macron is now addressing the audience at the end of Day 1 of the AI Action Summit in Paris.

You can follow on video, but I will also bring you all the lines here.

Rome correspondent

Some of Italy’s best-known business leaders, including the fashion designer Giorgio Armani and the Prada chair, Patrizio Bertelli, have been targeted by an artificial intelligence-based scam that involved the mimicking of the defence minister’s voice in telephone calls claiming to seek help to free Italian journalists kidnapped in the Middle East.

Prosecutors in Milan have received four legal complaints, including from Massimo Moratti, the former owner of Inter Milan, and a member of the Beretta family, the world’s oldest producer of firearms. The defence minister, Guido Crosetto, on Monday said he would submit a legal complaint after his voice was cloned and used in at least one of the calls.

At least one of the targets is known to have fallen for the scam and was duped into making two transfers totalling €1m to an account in Hong Kong after falsely believing they would be reimbursed by the Bank of Italy.

Full story:

Back to Paris and the AI Action summit, French president Emmanuel Macron is expected to speak at some point within the next hour, at the conclusion of Day 1 debates and before he hosts global leaders tomorrow.

Earlier today, he met with Chinese vice premier Zhang Guoqing.

We will bring you the latest here.

Suspected Nice church attacker says he has ‘no recollection’ of fatal stabbings

Kim Willsher

Paris correspondent

A Tunisian man has gone on trial in France accused of fatally stabbing three people in a terrorist attack at a church in Nice.

Brahim Aouissaoui, 25, told the special court in Paris he had no recollection of the events of October 2020, when he allegedly almost decapitated a 60-year-old woman, stabbed another worshipper 24 times and slit the throat of a church worker with a kitchen knife – killing all three.

It took seven police officers to arrest Aouissaoui, who was shot several times. Afterwards, officers said he was carrying a copy of the Qur’an, three knives and two mobile phones.

The trial continues until 26 February.

Full story:

The governing party of the prime minister, Albin Kurti, is on track to secure the most seats in Kosovo’s parliament but will lack the numbers for a majority, the election commission has said.

Sunday’s vote pitted Kurti’s campaign to stamp out the influence of Serbia, more than 15 years after Kosovo declared independence, against the opposition’s vow to boost the economy in one of the poorest corners of Europe.

With 93% of votes counted and no party with a clear majority in the 120-seat parliament, analysts warned that Kosovo could be facing prolonged crisis, possibly ending with another election.

Most Örebro shooting victims had immigrant backgrounds, police says

Miranda Bryant

Nordic correspondent

Most of the people killed by a gunman in the Swedish city of Örebro last week had an immigrant background, police have said, after the prime minister paid tribute to the victims as “people who wanted to do something good, who wanted to contribute to a better society”.

Among those understood to have been killed in Sweden’s deadliest mass shooting, which took place at an adult education centre on Tuesday, were two Syrian men, both refugees, an Eritrean woman, an Iranian woman and a female teacher from Kurdistan.

Niclas Hallgren, the deputy regional police chief for Bergslagen, told SVT: “Most of the victims in the school shooting had a foreign background. Ethnicity is a circumstance that the police have taken into account since early in the investigation when assessing a possible motive.”

He added: “It is too early to say that there is a specific reason behind the act.”

Full report:

Sweden will commemorate the victims of the Örebro mass shooting with a national minute of silence at midday on Tuesday.

Earlier during the day, flags will be flown at half mast.

Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson said he wanted “to honour the victims who never came home to their loved ones.”

Fears over AI’s environmental, inequality impact dominate Paris summit

Dan Milmo

Global technology editor, in Paris

The impact of artificial intelligence on the environment and inequality has dominated the opening exchanges of a global summit in Paris attended by political leaders, tech executives and experts.

Emmanuel Macron’s AI envoy, Anne Bouverot, opened the two-day gathering at the Grand Palais in the heart of the French capital with a speech referring to the environmental impact of AI, which requires vast amounts of energy and resource to develop and operate.

“We know that AI can help mitigate climate change, but we also know that its current trajectory is unsustainable,” Bouverot said. Sustainable development of the technology would be on the agenda, she added.

Full report:

Romanian president Klaus Iohannis said he would resign following pressure for him to leave the post after a court last year cancelled the country’s presidential election.

When annulling the elections, Romania’s top court said Iohannis, whose second and last term expired in December last year, should stay on until his replacement is elected, after it voided the presidential ballot on suspicion of Russian interference.

Today’s decision follows a move by opposition parties to try to force his impeachment in parliament, although Romanian media noted that they did not have the majority required to pass their motion.

“In order to spare Romania and the Romanian citizens from crisis… I resign from the office of president of Romania,” Iohannis said, adding that he would officially stand down on Wednesday, AFP reported.

He called the motion to impeach him “unfounded” and “damaging” to Romania’s reputation, and practically irrelevant given he was set to step down within months anyway.

The Romanian parliament will meet to discuss next steps on Tuesday, the country’s national press agency Agerpres reported.

The re-run of the presidential election is expected to take place in May.