India, 57 others sign Paris joint statement on inclusive, sustainable AI

Fifty eight countries, including India, China, Brazil, France and Australia, signed a joint statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet at the AI Action Summit in Paris on Tuesday (February 11, 2025), with more signatories possible after the summit ends. The statement was not signed by the United States and the United Kingdom. The statement calls for promoting the accessibility of AI, and ensuring trust and safety in deploying the technology. 

India and France are co-chairing the summit. The statement calls for making “innovation in AI thrive by enabling conditions for its development and avoiding market concentration driving industrial recovery and development,” and fostering the tech in a way that “positively shapes the future of work and labour markets”. 

This is the third such international statement, with previous ones being issued after summits in the U.K. and South Korea. It calls for AI “to be human rights based, human-centric, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy while also stressing the need and urgency to narrow the inequalities and assist developing countries in artificial intelligence capacity-building so they can build AI capacities.”

The U.S. did not immediately explain its reasons for not signing the statement. Earlier in the day, American Vice President J.D. Vance struck a defiant tone against the themes highlighted in the statement. “I’m not here this morning to talk about AI safety, which was the title of the conference a couple of years ago,” Mr. Vance said. “I’m here to talk about AI opportunity.” 

“...we believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off, and we’ll make every effort to encourage pro-growth AI policies, and I’d like to see that deregulatory flavour making its way into a lot of the conversations at this conference,” Mr. Vance added. 

The BBC quoted a British government spokesperson as saying that the country “hadn’t been able to agree [on] all parts of the leaders’ declaration,” and that it would “only ever sign up to initiatives that are in U.K. national interests.”