France wants to compete with China and US in the field of artificial intelligence

France is investing 1.5 billion euros over the next five years to achieve a top position in the development of artificial intelligence. The country wants to catch up with China and the US.

France wants to relax its rules to allow experiments with artificial intelligence and offer attractive conditions for French top researchers abroad to return. The initiative was announced in Paris by French President Macron.

“We should not fall into the old French trap of looking at the negative aspects of new technology and using that as an excuse for rejecting it,” he said, according to Bloomberg. The plan is for France to build on expertise with sector-specific technology at government agencies, such as hospitals, which have large amounts of medical data, according to Politico. This data can be used for medical breakthroughs in, for example, research into tumors.

In announcing Macron, Samsung, DeepMind and Fujitsu announced they were expanding their AI research centers in the Paris region. For example, Samsung wants to expand its current team of fifteen researchers to fifty this year and to a hundred at a later stage. France is also joining forces with Germany in the attempt to take a leadership role in AI research.