The French Minister of the Economy considered it possible on Saturday for the European Union to build “within five years” its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) system, which, according to him, will contribute to improving the productivity of an economy “ languid”.
“Generative artificial intelligence will allow us, for the first time in several generations, to regain productivity, to be more efficient”, launched Bruno Le Maire in front of a conquered audience at the Economic Meetings of Aix-en-Provence. , in the south of France. “I therefore plead, before laying the foundations for the regulation of artificial intelligence, for us to innovate, to invest and to set ourselves the objective of having a European OpenAI within five years, with the calculators, scientists and the necessary algorithms. It is possible,” he added. It is science “that will finally allow us to make productivity gains in a somewhat languid European economy”, more “twisting” than “TGV”, he insisted.
The general public discovered the immense potential of artificial intelligence systems at the end of 2022 with the release of the ChatGPT editorial content generator from the Californian company OpenAI, which can write essays, poems or translations in seconds. But the dissemination on social networks of false images, more real than life, created from applications like Midjourney, has alerted to the risks of manipulation of opinion and the dangers for democracy.
In mid-June, the minister had already insisted on the need for the EU to “invest and innovate” to develop artificial intelligence systems, before “regulating” American technologies, at the risk otherwise of losing its “independence” . The European Parliament approved in June a draft regulation of AI and the EU hopes to conclude before the end of the year the first regulation in the world aimed at regulating and protecting innovation in this strategic sector.
On a completely different subject, Bruno Le Maire was in favor of economists discussing the advisability of the European Central Bank (ECB) raising its inflation target from 2% to 3%. “If economists open this debate (…), why not? No taboos, transgression, that’s how we move forward,” he said. The economist Patrick Artus spoke out on Saturday for such an increase, in particular to allow the States to free up more budgetary room for maneuver and to limit the increase in their public debt.
