10 AND 11 FEBRUARY 2025. AI Action Summit.

70 years after the term “artificial intelligence” was coined, we find ourselves at the cusp of the most recent models have generated a new AI revolution based on the most recent models. This new revolution is transforming jobs, health, culture, economies, and more, in all regions of the world. Now is the time for people to actively shape how they want artificial intelligence to develop within their societies.

AI presents a real opportunity for society and we must be proactive to collectively answer the central question: “What does a society look like when AI is working well and in people’s interest?”. While acknowledging and embracing the positive changes AI has to offer, we must also be reactive and guard against misuse and abuse. It is essential to work on both fronts at the same time. Building on the Bletchley Park Summit in November 2023 and the Seoul virtual Summit in May 2024, and on the initiative of the President of the Republic, France will be hosting an AI action Summit, gathering heads of state and government and international organizations, leaders of small and larger private companies, representatives of academia and civil society, on February 10th and 11th, 2025.

The AI Action Summit will build on the ground work of stakeholders’ working groups gathering experts coming from all regions of the world, to address five essential domains, for each of which concrete decisions and actions will be unveiled at the event :

1. Public Interest AI - Defining, building and delivering critical open public infrastructure for the global AI sector to drive beneficial social, economic and environmental outcomes safely and in the public interest. This includes a focus on AI openness, data governance, shared computer and the talent needed to drive these in the public interest. Climate and health are two critical cross-cutting themes.   
    
2. Future of Work - Providing a platform for dialogue on how AI can support the future of work agenda by promoting AI usage that enhances productivity and well-being. This includes leveraging AI opportunities and regulating its usage through sustained social dialogue, measuring and monitoring AI's effects in the workplace to anticipate impacts on the labour market and education, and supporting economic actors and workers in adapting to AI advancements.
    
3. Innovation & Culture - Supporting and building dynamic innovation ecosystems - that also work hand-in-hand with cultural and artistic industries - is a key part of developing a strong AI landscape. This track includes strengthening the fabric of IA companies, use of AI in businesses, public research, providing access to key resources (including compute and data), developing innovations that support culture & artists, as well as fostering more diverse value chains and a competitive landscape. 
    
4. AI of Trust - Consolidating the mechanisms for building trust in AI by relying on objective scientific consensus on safety and security issues, by the development of concrete and pragmatic risk reduction solutions in identified areas such as cybersecurity or information manipulation, by the implementation of risk analysis and assessment capabilities based on expert evaluation institutes, international standards and reinforced international cooperation.
    
5. Global AI Governance - Shaping an effective and inclusive framework of international governance for AI, building on the work conducted within the United Nations and on existing initiatives like the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) and the United Nations tracks. A multistakeholder approach will help building robust scientific consensus, large scale convergence both on policies and standards, as well as concrete solutions for a beneficial and trustworthy AI for all.

Contributing to the summit

Could AI be at the heart of solutions to our global challenges? As part of the Paris Summit for Action on Artificial Intelligence, the Paris Peace Forum is launching an ambitious Call for AI Projects. The Call aims to identify, present and support initiatives from around the world around artificial intelligence for the common good, and will be open from September 3 to October 7, 2024. A jury of experts will select up to 50 projects to be announced in mid-December 2024, which will be presented at the Summit on February 10-11, 2025. 

The AI Action Summit will also mobilize a series of side-events gathering academics, civil society and the business community, as well as cultural events open to all audiences. The procedure for labelling side-events and sending scientific contributions will be communicated at a later date.

The Summit’s team

Special Envoy: Anne Bouverot
Advisor to the Special Envoy: Arno Amabile
Secretary General: Philippe Huberdeau
Deputy General Secretary: Chloé Goupille

Thematic Envoys:

Public Interest AI: Martin Tisné
Future of Work: Sana de Courcelles
Innovation & Culture: Roxanne Varza
Security & Safety: Guillaume Poupard
International Governance: Henri Verdier

Presentation of the Summit’s team

Anne Bouverot – Special Envoy

Anne Bouverot spent most of her career in the technology sector and now advises a number of public and private technology companies or scale ups. She chairs the Board of Ecole Normale Supérieure, France’s leading “grande école” in Science and Humanities. In 2017 she co-founded Fondation Abeona “Championing Responsible AI” on societal impacts of artificial intelligence. Notable programs include a visiting Chair on Social Justice & AI and an introductory MOOC on AI already followed by more than 350 000 people. She co-chairs the recently launched AI & Society Institute in Paris.
She spent the first 20 years of her career with Orange in a number of positions, then became Director General of the GSMA (the global mobile telecommunications association) and later CEO of Morpho (digital security and identity solutions). She is a graduate of Ecole Normale Supérieure in mathematics and holds both an engineering degree in telecommunications and a PhD in artificial intelligence.

Arno Amabile – Advisor to the Special Envoy

A data scientist turned civil servant, Arno Amabile joined the Summit’s team after experiences in bringing forward the digital transformation of several organizations and stimulating industrial and digital ecosystems. He was involved in strengthening the State's digital skills as deputy head of the Corps des Mines graduate program, which recruits and trains top-level engineers for the French State.
From 2021 to 2022, he led the digital task force of the “Etats généraux de la Justice”, assembled to reform the French justice system, before leading the development of the Ministry's new digital strategy. He began his career as a data scientist at City Hall in New York and at Zalando in Berlin, before moving to Strasbourg, where he led the State's action for regional industrial development. In this role, he coordinated government support for businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic recovery plan.
An economics graduate of the Ecole normale supérieure de Paris, he holds degrees from New York University in Urban Informatics and from Paris School of Economics in Economic Policy and Analysis.

Philippe Huberdeau – Secretary-General

After graduating from Ecole polytechnique (X91), Philippe Huberdeau began a career as a diplomat in the Quai d’Orsay specializing on European affairs and international economic issues, notably international trade and economic sanctions.Philippe also taught European studies at SciencesPo and worked for the European Commission as well as BNP Paribas. In 2017 he published the book “Is European construction irreversible ?”.
After having organized the French G7 in Biarritz in 2019, he was appointed Secretary general of Scale-Up Europe a Paneuropean initiative launched by President Macron with the support of all member states and the European Commission aiming at building in Europe 10 Tech champions worth euro 100bn each by 2030.

Chloé Goupille - Deputy General-Secretary 

As a career diplomat, Chloé Goupille has been involved in both France's European policy and in global issues, such as climate change and global health. She has served in the French Embassies in London and Berlin. From 2013 to 2015, she was advisor to the French Minister for European Affairs, focusing notably on climate change and energy. From 2020 to 2023, she was deputy Europe advisor to the French President of the Republic and contributed to organizing the French presidency of the Council of the European Union. 
Besides, she has worked on France's foreign policy with respect to global public goods. First when she was in charge of France's contribution to the Global fund to fight Aids,Tuberculosis and Malaria, and later as Senior Advisor to the French Executive Director to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington DC. Chloé is fluent in French, German and English and is learning Arabic. She holds degrees from the London School of Economics, the University of Kent and Sciences Po Lille.

Martin Tisné – Public Interest AI

Martin Tisné leads the AI Collaborative, an initiative of The Omidyar Group created to help regulate artificial intelligence based on democratic values and principles and ensure the public has a voice in that regulation.
Martin brings over 15 years of investment and leadership experience to his role, including advising several heads of state on AI policy, serving as a board member of the Partnership on AI, and helping establish two multi-stakeholder initiatives and three NGOs.
He founded the Open Government Partnership (OGP) alongside the Obama White House and helped OGP grow to a 70+ country initiative. He also initiated the International Open Data Charter, the G7 Open Data Charter, and the G20’s commitment to open data principles. Additionally, Martin founded and led the Transparency and Accountability Initiative, a donor collaborative bringing together the world’s largest open government funders, co-founded Publish What You Fund, a global campaign for foreign aid transparency, and co-founded Integrity Watch Afghanistan, the country’s leading anti-corruption NGO.
As a philanthropic entrepreneur, Martin helped set up AINow, the Ethics & Governance of AI Fund, the AWO agency, Digital Action, and Reset amongst other initiatives.
Before his appointment as CEO of the AI Collaborative in September 2023, Martin led Luminate’s efforts to address global digital threats to democracy through policy change, campaigns, partnerships, and litigation.

Sana de Courcelles – Future of Work

Sana de Courcelles is  Senior Advisor for Special Initiatives at the International Labour Organization and the Director of the Secretariat of the Global Coalition for Social Justice.
She has been Health Counsellor to the Permanent Representation of France to the United Nations in Geneva since September 2019, with a special responsibility on the international response to COVID-19.
Previously, she served as Executive Director of the School of Public Affairs at Sciences Po and an affiliated professor specializing in State Reform and Health.
From 2014 to 2019, she worked at the World Health Organization on Health Systems and Innovation in Geneva. She also held roles as Parliamentary Advisor for the french Commissaire Général à l'Investissement, and began her career as a public sector strategy and organization consultant at Capgemini Consulting.

Roxanne Varza – Innovation & Culture

Roxanne Varza is currently Director of STATION F, the world's biggest startup campus, located in Paris. She is also an angel investor, scout for Sequoia Capital, and sits on the boards of NRJ Group and le Fonds pour l'indépendance de la presse (FIP). 
Before joining STATION F, she was at Microsoft and TechCrunch. She also co-founded Tech.eu (acquired by Webrazzi), StartHer (now Sista) and the Failcon Paris conference. Roxanne is trilingual and holds degrees from UCLA, Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics. 

Guillaume Poupard – AI of Trust - Security & Safety

Graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique (promotion X92) and doctor in cryptology, Guillaume worked for the french Prime minister and Ministry of Defense where he specialized in cybersecurity and cyberdefense. As Director General of ANSSI, the french national cybersecurity agency, from 2014 to 2022, Guillaume Poupard played a key role in asserting France’s leadership in cybersecurity on a European and international scale, both by promoting a harmonized European response to cyber threats and by helping to bring together ecosystems of public and private actors on cybersecurity issues. Since January 2023, he has been Deputy Managing Director of Docaposte, leader in trusted digital technologies, in particular in charge of technological assets around artificial intelligence, cyber, IT and the cloud.

Henri Verdier – Global AI Governance

Henri Verdier was born in 1968. Currently, he is Ambassador for Digital Affairs for the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. Previously, he was the interministerial director for digital information and communications systems (DG Dinsic) of France; and director of Etalab, the French agency for public open data.
Mr Verdier is also an entrepreneur: he was the co-founder and CEO of MFG Labs, an internet-based startup involved in social data mining, and chairman of the board of Cap Digital, the French-European Cluster for Digital Content and Services, located in Paris. He is member of the ARCEP strategic committee, member of the CNIL strategic committee and also served as member of the board of Paris-Sorbonne University.
In addition, Mr Verdier was the founding director of Edition Odile Jacob Multimedia, a publishing company in the field of e-learning and executive adviser for innovation at Lagardère Group as well as director of foresight at Institut Telecom. In 2012, he co-authored, with Nicolas Colin, the book, L'Age de la Multitude, Entreprendre et Gouverner Après la Révolution Numérique (The Age of Multitude, Entrepreneurship and Governance After the Digital Revolution). Mr Verdier is a graduate of Ecole Normale Supérieure.