 "File photo of French President Emmanuel Macron (L) talking to Donald Trump during a welcome ceremony at Les Invalides in Paris on July 13, 2017. Source: AFP.")
France’s President Emmanuel Macron laid out his plans to challenge US President Donald Trump’s Stargate initiative which aims to boost development in the Artificial Intelligence (AI). In an exclusive conversation with Firstpost and France TV, Macron announced that Europe will be announcing a €109 billion investment in AI, which is equivalent to what the US announced with Stargate.
Last month, Trump announced a joint venture of $500 billion investment in infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence (AI), calling the initiative Stargate. The new entity is a joint venture by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank and aims to develop the infrastructure needed for advanced AI systems.
The company would be tasked with building data centres and electricity generation facilities, both critical to powering the rapidly evolving AI landscape. While the initial investment is $100 billion, it could expand to $500 billion. The project is centred in Texas, with construction on the first 10 data centres already underway.
Macron noted that in Europe’s joint venture, UAE will also contribute in a significant way. “They (UAE) are going to create huge data centres and American, Canadian and French companies will also be present,” He explained. “Europe is going to grow faster, France is going to accelerate too,” Macron remarked.
Macron keeps the environment in mind
When asked about the impact on the environment these data centres will have, Macron emphasised that his focus will be on creating a partnership for sustainable AI. “(Data centres) do use a lot of energy. Carbon-free energy, that’s what we need. In Europe, we launched a big programme on semiconductors with the help of the EU and in France we actually make semiconductors and we are going to continue making them.” he said.
“In France, we have some of the most carbon-free energy in the world, we have a stable grid and we export our carbon-free energy. In the 60s our predecessors chose nuclear energy, we developed it and we are continuing to build new nuclear reactors and we also focus on renewable energy,” he added.
Macron emphasised that no other European nation produces this much carbon energy in addition to its own consumption. “When we built data centres in France, it is different to the US because their data centres use oil,” he said. “When you come and build data centres in France, they will be clean because our electricity is clean and we are not going to do it to the detrimental to our industries and our households,” he added. The French leader noted that what makes his country different is it can innovate with less.