France and India co-chaired the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit on 10-11 February 2025, bringing together global leaders to advance AI for public good.
- The summit built on key milestones from the Bletchley Park (November 2023) and Seoul (May 2024) summits.
- France welcomed India as the host of the next AI Summit.
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Key Outcomes of the Summit
- Joint Statement on “Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet”:
- Signed By: The Joint statement was signed by 58 countries including India, China, Brazil, France, Australia and the European Commission.
- The United States and the United Kingdom abstained from voting.
- Public Interest AI Platform and Incubator: It has been launched to decrease division between existing public and private initiatives on Public Interest AI and address digital divides.
- Founding Members: India, Kenya, Germany, Chile, Finland, Slovenia, France, Nigeria, Morocco
- Aim: To co-create a trustworthy AI ecosystem advancing the public interest by supporting technical assistance and capacity building projects in data, model development, transparency, audit, compute, talent, financing and collaboration.
- The Observatory on Energy, AI and Data Centres: Countries for the first time had promoted an international discussion on AI and environment.
- IEA will release the Observatory on Energy, AI and Data Centres in 2025.
- It will gather the most comprehensive and recent data worldwide on AI’s electricity needs, in addition to tracking cutting-edge AI applications across the energy sector.
- Coalition for Environmentally Sustainable Artificial Intelligence (AI): It aims to strengthen sustainable AI’s place in the global discussion around AI in much the same way AI security or AI ethics are studied.
- Initiated by: France, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
- Green Digital Action Initiative: It is a multi-stakeholder initiative that is convened by the International Telecommunication Union launching a new thematic pillar on green computing with a dedicated Sustainable AI working group.
- Current AI: Current AI will fund open, accountable, and purpose-driven AI that prioritizes transparency, fairness, and global equity to prevent the harms and harness the benefits of AI.
- Launched by: MacArthur in partnership with government, tech companies, and philanthropy with an initial $400 million investment.
- The partnership aims to raise a total of $2.5 billion over the next five years.
- AI for Labour: Creation of a network of Observatories, to better anticipate AI implications for workplaces, training and education and to use AI to foster productivity, skill development, quality and working conditions and social dialogue.
- Global Dialogue on AI Governance: Commitment to initiate a Global Dialogue on AI governance and the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and to align on-going governance efforts, ensuring complementarity and avoiding duplication.
About the “Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet”
- This is the third such international statement on AI with previous ones being issued after summits,
- Bletchley Declaration, UK : It establishes a shared understanding of the opportunities and risks posed by frontier AI signed by 28 countries and the European Union at the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park, UK in 2023.
- The Seoul Declaration, South Korea: It was signed by 10 countries and the EU in 2024, confirmed a shared understanding of the opportunities and risks posed by AI
- Priorities:
- Accessibility of AI: The statement calls for promoting the accessibility of AI, and ensuring trust and safety in deploying the technology.
- Foster Innovations: To enable innovations in AI to thrive and avoiding market concentration driving industrial recovery and development.
- Labour Safety: Enable Developments in AI in such a way as to which positively shapes the future of work and labour markets.
- Human Rights based AI: It calls for AI “to be human rights based, human-centric, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy
- Equal AI: The Statement also bats for a need and urgency to narrow the inequalities by assisting developing countries in artificial intelligence capacity-building
- Sustainable AI: AI must (from data centres to training models) run on sustainable energy so that it fuels a more sustainable future
- As per IEA estimates, data centres consumed 1.65 billion gigajoules of electricity in 2022 (about 2% of global demand).
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About The AI Action Summit
- The AI action summit was held on February 10-11, 2025, co-chaired by India and France.
- Existing Multilateral Initiatives on AI: The Summit acknowledged existing multilateral Initiatives on AI including,
- The United Nations General Assembly Resolutions, the Global Digital Compact, the UNESCO Recommendation on Ethics of AI, the African Union Continental AI Strategy, The works of, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Council of Europe and European Union, the G7 including the Hiroshima AI Process and G20.
- Themes:
- Public Interest AI: To define, build and deliver critical open AI infrastructure for global AI sector for beneficial social, economic and environmental outcomes for public good
- Future of Work:To promote socially responsible use of artificial intelligence through sustained social dialogue
- Innovation and Culture: To build sustainable innovative ecosystems that work with all economic sectors, specially creative and cultural industries
- Trust in AI: To consolidate mechanisms to build trust in AI based on a scientific consensus on safety and security issues
- Global AI governance: To shape an inclusive and effective framework of international governance on AI.
Concerns Regarding The AI Economy
- AI-Energy Nexus: AI is a very high Energy Intensive Sector with IEA estimating that a single ChatGPT query requires 2.9 watt-hours of electricity ( 10 times higher) as compared to 0.3 watt-hours for a Google search today.
- Data centre power demand will grow 160 per cent by 2030 and the expected rise of carbon dioxide emissions will represent a “social cost” of $125-140 billion (at present value)
- Displacement in Labour Markets: The impact of AI on the labour market, particularly entry-level jobs is a challenge for policymakers with fears of a large-scale economic displacement potentially exacerbating existing social and economic divides.
- The International Labour Organisation estimates that nearly 75 million jobs globally are at complete risk of automation due to AI
- Automation Inequality: There is a risk of concentration of the benefits of automation in a ‘winner-takes-all’ approach to the detriment of developing countries who are labour and resource-rich worsening inequality
- Bias in AI models: Training datasets can reflect societal biases, leading to discriminatory outcomes when AI systems make decisions.
- AI Governance: The differences in approaches to AI Governance is quite evident with Europe seeking to regulate and invest, China expanding access through state-backed tech giants, and the U.S. championing a hands-off deregulation approach.
- The Global AI Standards are in a process of development and the Developing countries risk being left out the process due to not enough AI stake.
Labour In The AI Era
- The International Labour Organisation estimates that nearly 75 million jobs globally are at complete risk of automation due to AI.
- India: NASSCOM estimates that the Indian AI market will grow at 25 to 35 per cent CAGR by 2027
- Crisis:
- Displacement: A significant share of India’s I.T workforce is employed in low value added services which are the most susceptible to automation.
- As per the Economic Survey 2023-24, India would have to create an average of 78.5 lakh jobs annually in the non-farm sector by 2030 to cater to the rising workforce
- Macroeconomic Implication: India is a consumption based economy, thus job loss resulting consumption fall will derail the growth trajectory of India as it can have severe macroeconomic implications
- Economic Disparity: Workers may not immediately benefit from the productivity and profitability gains associated with technological advancements which can lead to enduring hardships.
- Catalyst
- Complement: A study by Mani (2018) illustrated how the introduction of robots in India only accounted for the replacement of only 10 jobs per 10000 in the manufacturing sector by 2016.
- Reduction in Skill Inequality: AI tool helps bridge the skill gap as it allows low-skilled workers to produce outputs closer in quality to the work high skilled workers do without any tools leading to overall productivity increases
- Introduction of generative AI assistants augmenting customer support personnel increased productivity by 14 per cent including a 34 per cent improvement for new and lower-skilled workers
- Talent Pool: India is the country with the youngest workforce population thus have a rich talent pool available for capitalising on emerging technologies by investing it education and skilling initiatives.
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Way Forward
- Energy Saving AI Infrastructure: It is crucial to design AI algorithms and infrastructures that consume less energy and integrate AI into smart grids to optimise power use
- AI Institutions: Create robust institutions which could help transition workers to medium- and high-skilled jobs, where AI can augment their efforts rather than replace them.
- Skilling Initiatives: Include AI as a foundational subject in school and college curriculum and upskilling programmes for workers.
- Free from Biases Model: Development of AI models in an open source format which is inclusive and free of constraints like language barriers .
- Break AI Infrastructure Monopoly: The monopoly of advanced nations on AI infrastructure like ( Production of Advanced AI chip by Nvidia, USA) should be restricted for a more equitable access to AI and its benefits to all economies.
India in The AI Summit
- India co chaired the summit along with France
- India has shown its willingness to host the AI Summit in the year 2026.
- AI Video Localization: A strategic partnership between Mediawen (France) and Reverie Language Technologies (India) has been announced to collaborate on revolutionizing video accessibility by enabling seamless localization into 11 Indian languages, fostering inclusivity across diverse audiences.
- The solution is incorporated into Coming2India.com, a newly launched full-service localization platform backed by Eureka Innowwide.
- PM’s Message:
- Open Source: PM called to embrace open-source AI models on the lines of Chinese AI model Deepseek to drive innovation and inclusivity.
- Free From Biases Datasets: The Indian government is looking to fund foundational models that understand the Indian context capturing India’s varied nuances
- Potential Impact of AI on Jobs: Although the nature of future jobs will undergo a substantial change, PM called for “skilling and re-skilling” people while embracing the technology.
- Sustainable AI: AI is a highly energy intensive sector and will have to rely on “green power to fuel its future” like nuclear energy.
- Sustainable AI also means that AI models must also be efficient and sustainable in size, data needs and resource requirements.
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February 12, 2025
