By Matthew Field

A French billionaire has put further pressure on Rishi Sunak’s artificial intelligence (AI) summit after announcing plans for a rival conference in Paris just a fortnight later.

Xavier Niel, the telecoms mogul and co-owner of French paper Le Monde, has launched a bid to woo AI companies to France with what he has dubbed Europe’s “leading AI conference”.

The billionaire’s Iliad Group will host a gathering of AI professionals sponsored by chipmaker Nvidia on Nov 17 in Paris, 15 days after the UK hosts tech leaders at Bletchley Park to discuss the risks posed by the new technology.

Mr Niel, who is an investor in Vodafone, said he would also invest €200m (£174m) in AI, including establishing a research lab and a new supercomputer.

The plans represent a clear challenge to Britain’s ambitions to become a global hub for the technology.

The British government is also planning an investment in a public “AI research resource”, spending £100m buying up Nvidia microchips to support future research.

Iliad said its conference at event space Station F was “designed to become Europe’s leading annual AI event”. It will focus on the latest advances and industry use cases.

The UK’s Global Summit on AI Safety, meanwhile, will be focused on the potential risks and how to control them. The Telegraph reported this week that Rishi Sunak believes we only have a “small window” to address the threats posed by AI.

The Bletchley Park summit will focus on how to stop AI being used by bad actors, such as those trying to create powerful bioweapons or cyber attacks. It will also explore the risk of humanity losing control of its AI tools.

Britain’s focus on the dangers of AI has raised some eyebrows among pioneers of the technology, who feel such existential threats are overblown.

Yann LeCun, the chief AI scientist at Facebook-owner Meta, on Tuesday said Mr Sunak was being swayed by “delusion” over AI.

He wrote on Twitter: “The UK Prime Minister has caught the existential fatalistic risk from AI delusion disease’.”

Mr Niel’s rival conference comes after an already rocky start to Britain’s efforts to position itself as a global leader in AI.

The Telegraph previously reported that US President Joe Biden was not expected to attend Britain’s summit, instead sending vice president Kamala Harris.

Paris has emerged as a hotbed of AI talent and is home to some of Europe’s most valuable machine-learning start-ups. 

This summer, Mistral, a French AI business, raised €105m just four weeks after it was founded. Another start-up, Poolside AI, raised €118m and relocated its team from the US to Paris.

Mr Niel told Bloomberg: “When you go to any AI lab in the world, you’ll find that there are always researchers from French schools… Our challenge is how to make them stay here, or come back if they are abroad.”

A government spokesman said: “The UK will host the first major global summit on AI safety this November, bringing together key countries, as well as leading technology companies, civil society, and researchers, to drive targeted, rapid international action. 

“It is precisely because the Prime Minister believes in the benefits of AI that the UK takes the risks around AI incredibly seriously – these can only be managed by countries working together to make sure AI is safe.”