Macron Praises UPI, Calls For Global ‘AI-together’
He added that AI must benefit everyone and be developed with human oversight and accountability
New Delhi: French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday praised India’s digital transformation, saying the country had “built what no other country in the world has built” by creating a digital identity for its 1.4 billion people.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Impact Summit at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, Macron said, “Ten years ago, the world told India that 1.4 billion people could not be brought into the digital economy. India proved them wrong.” Referring to digital payments through the UPI interface, he said that even small vendors could now receive payments instantly.
He also noted that India records around 20 billion digital transactions every month and praised the country’s approach of promoting small language models integrated into smartphones and supporting start-ups.
Calling for “AI-Together” and greater global inclusivity, Macron said France’s priority as head of the G7 was to ban social media for children below 15. He said France had already begun internal steps in that direction and expressed hope that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would consider similar action.
“There is no reason why children should be exposed online to what is forbidden in the outside world … In the end, safe spaces always win,” he said, adding, “No country is bound to serve only as a market where foreign companies sell the models and download the citizens’ data.”
Macron emphasised the need for connectivity and cooperation, stating that while the “old order” was “compete or you lose”, the new order was “connect or you fall behind”. He highlighted AI partnerships, including cooperation between India and the UAE on supercomputing clusters and France’s own collaboration with the UAE, as well as ongoing India–France cooperation in health and language models.
The event was attended by over 20 Heads of State and Government, including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his address, warned that without investment, many countries risked being left behind in the AI era. He called for a Global Fund on AI to build basic capacity in developing countries.
“Encouraged by the United Nations General Assembly,” he said, he is calling for the creation of a Global AI Fund to build foundational capacity in developing countries — including skills development, data infrastructure, affordable computing power and inclusive innovation ecosystems.
He added that the proposed corpus of $3 billion would amount to “less than one per cent of the annual revenue of a single tech company.”
“The future of AI cannot be decided by a handful of countries – or left to the whims of a few billionaires,” Guterres said, adding that an Independent International Scientific Panel on AI had now been appointed.
He also announced the launch of a Global Dialogue on AI Governance under the United Nations and the formation of a Global Network for Exchange and Cooperation on AI capacity-building in the developing world.
Stressing safeguards, he said, “No child should be a test subject for unregulated AI.” He added that AI must benefit everyone and be developed with human oversight and accountability.
The summit marked what Guterres described as a significant moment, noting that it was the first AI summit hosted in the global South.
