The global world order is under threat due to a handful of US tech giants dominating the AI race, Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch said in a keynote speech on Thursday.
Speaking at the global AI Impact Summit taking place in New Delhi on Thursday, Mensch said: “We are at risk today [...] We are facing too much concentration of power in AI.”
“We don’t want to be in a world where three or four enormous companies own the making and deployment of AI.”
The largest businesses building AI models, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, are currently based in the US. Mistral is one of Europe’s buzziest companies in the field, but with a valuation of nearly €12bn remains much smaller than its competitors across the Atlantic. OpenAI was last reported to be valued more than $850bn.
US-based cloud providers like AWS, Google and Microsoft are also building out most of the infrastructure needed to power and run AI models.
With the technology set to generate “multiple digits of the [global] GDP” in the next few years, said Mensch, it is necessary to ensure no player gets “excessive leverage” in AI.
“AI will change the equilibrium of the world and in order for the equilibrium to remain sustainable and stable we need to ban excessive leverage,” he added.
"Ownership and making sure nobody gets excessive leverage is going to be critical if we want to ensure the world we live in remains stable."
The AI Impact Summit
The AI Impact Summit is the fourth in a series of international events that included a “Safety Summit” in the UK in 2023 and an “Action Summit” in France last year.
Amid rising geopolitical tensions and a growing divide between the US and Europe, the events have increasingly focused on digital sovereignty and autonomy in AI.
“AI should be a tool for empowerment and not for dominance,” said Mensch. “We need to ensure that everyone who runs AI workloads has access to the turn-on and turn-off button [...] That they are not dependent on external providers who can turn off the button.”
Mensch called for “another path” in AI based on decentralisation of the technology, to ensure countries can secure their own digital autonomy. This can be achieved thanks to open-source AI models, he said, such as those developed by Mistral.
Speaking at the event today French president Emmanuel Macron similarly stated that as the race for AI intensifies between the US and China, other regions must build their own approach to the technology.
“No country is bound to serve only as a market where foreign companies serve their models and download their citizens’ data,” said Macron.
“Some say AI is a game only the biggest can play [...] That nothing can exist between the two blocs. India, France, Europe, together with our partners, those who believe in our approach, there might be a different way.”
