French Finance Minister Roland Lescure has challenged calls to slow the development of frontier artificial intelligence, warning that restrictions could reinforce the position of the US companies already leading the industry.
Speaking on Wednesday, Lescure argued that some of the strongest calls for slowing AI development are coming from companies already “at the top of the class”.
“If you’re at the top of the class and you tell everybody else to slow down, you’re going to stay at the top of the class,” he said.
Rather than allowing Europe to fall further behind, Lescure argued that France and the EU should accelerate development of their own AI capabilities while managing the technology’s risks.
Europe faces a choice
The intervention comes as European leaders debate whether the rapid improvement of frontier AI systems itself needs to be constrained.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has backed efforts to “pace” frontier capabilities and plans to convene leading AI laboratories to discuss the risks created by increasingly powerful systems.
Lescure’s argument approaches the problem from the opposite direction.
Europe remains heavily dependent on American technology companies for the most capable AI models and much of the computing infrastructure required to develop them.
Slowing development while those companies hold the lead could therefore have competitive consequences as well as safety benefits.
Safety or a competitive moat?
That does not mean warnings from frontier AI companies are necessarily motivated by commercial interests.
Leading AI executives and researchers have repeatedly warned that increasingly capable systems could create serious risks, while the companies developing them have direct knowledge of how quickly those capabilities are advancing.
But regulation can have more than one effect.
Rules requiring enormous computing resources, extensive safety testing or costly compliance systems may be easier for established technology companies to absorb than smaller competitors or countries attempting to close the technological gap.
That creates a difficult question for governments considering how tightly frontier AI should be controlled.
The companies closest to the technological frontier may also be among the organisations best placed to explain its risks.
They are simultaneously the companies with the most to gain if reaching that frontier becomes substantially more difficult for everyone else.
Lescure’s answer is that Europe should not manage AI risk by accepting permanent technological dependence.
France wants to catch up first.
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