A United Arab Emirates fund plans to invest 30 to 50 billion euros (equivalent to 180 to 300 billion reais) in building a campus and a significant AI-related data processing center in France, as announced by the Elysee Palace ahead of a summit on the topic in Paris.
The third significant global AI conference began today, featuring scientific discussions and simultaneous updates from leading companies in the field. The gathering of representatives from approximately 80 nations is scheduled for next Monday and Tuesday.
Several meetings have been held in the past two years regarding the sector that is receiving substantial investments. Notable leaders scheduled to attend include U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Zhang Guoqing, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and German Head of Government Olaf Scholz.
The Arab investment was announced by the French government following a dinner between President Emmanuel Macron and Mohamed Bin Zayed al Nahyan. The campus, to be developed by the MGX investment fund with support from the Emirates, does not have a specified location yet.
France and Europe aim to establish a competitive stance against the United States and China by announcing their first significant investment at the upcoming meeting.
Data centers offer the significant computing power needed for AI, which is a high-energy technology. American tech giant OpenAI, known for creating the ChatGPT chatbot, revealed plans to permit European companies and educational institutions to store their data within Europe.
The Paris summit addresses European worries regarding the scale of technological advancements resulting from artificial intelligence, as well as the investments disclosed by the United States and China.
The industry was impacted by the news of a billion-dollar investment from the United States for setting up new data centers, as well as the introduction of DeepSeek, a cutting-edge Chinese AI service that was more affordable.
‘Bobage’ – ‘Bobage’
AI is transforming the economies of the most advanced nations, but experts disagree on whether it will surpass human intelligence.
One of the prominent researchers in the field, American Michael Jordan, referred to the quest for a super AI capable of solving all problems as “nonsense” during the discussions leading up to the summit meeting.
Jordan, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, opposed industry leaders like Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic, who claim that general artificial intelligence (AGI) will be developed in a few years.
The AGI is the highly desired goal of AI research that is expected to surpass humans in every domain.
Jordan, an expert in machine learning and statistics, argued that the idea of a super AGI capable of answering any question and knowing everything is illogical. According to him, such an AI cannot truly know everything as it lacks the ability to understand the context of his current thoughts and actions.