'We don't want to be dependent on US or Chinese model': Macron warns hyperscale AI race 'is unsustainable'

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that India and France share a common objective in artificial intelligence - to avoid dependence on either an American or Chinese model. 

Macron, who is on a three-day visit to India, was speaking during an interaction with students at AIIMS, where he addressed questions on sustainability, data access, education, and the public good in the context of AI.

"The AI summit organised by India is extremely important. After our action summit one year ago, we followed up the conversation to try to make sure that our countries benefit from the innovation, but to make sure as well that this innovation will be at the service of our common goods and our humanity," he said. 

He said India, France, and Europe have the same obsession, which is that "we don't want to be dependent on a totally US or totally Chinese model." "We really believe that we need a broader one, and we want to be part of the solutions, and we want to have players being part of the solutions," he said. 

The French President said that India and France want to make sure that both countries have the data centers and the computing capacities so that they can train talents in their respective countries. "We have all the capacities, and it's clearly about computing capacities, talents, and capital," he said. 

Elaborating further, Macron said when he speaks about computing capacities, it's about having affordable or at least competitive low-carbon energy in order to deliver this agenda. "I really believe we have a lot of assets and we are in the race. We are lagging behind both the US and China, but we are in the race."

He argued that building capacity is only part of the challenge. Adoption, he said, will determine whether AI translates into measurable gains. "Because it's how to make sure sector by sector with the right ethical approach, AI will be adopted and transform your productivity, will allow you to discover new diseases, to completely change your energy model, to be much more productive."

Macron, however, said that the way India and France want to be part of this race and this global competition is slightly different. "When we speak about large language models with MRI, we adopted a much more frugal approach. What Yann LeCun is building, by the way, in France, we are very proud of that India was one of the rare countries to choose small language models. Based on this frugality, and to be much more targeted," he said. "We're right because otherwise you can see that this race is already unsustainable by itself."

"These hyperscalers (are) buying and building or booking for huge data centers everywhere in the world. Most of them don't have access to energy. Most of them, even in the US, don't have energy, and none of them have clean energy. It's not sustainable even on the midterm," the French President said. 

He said cooperation between India and France could help close the gap. "So, I really believe that our common approach makes much more sense but we have to clearly bridge the gap at the same way but the alliance and the partnership between both of us make makes a lot of sense."

Hyperscalers are very large technology companies that operate massive cloud computing infrastructure at global scale. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), and Google (Google Cloud) are among some of the main hyperscalers.