February 9, 2025 – Paris, France
Google DeepMind CEO and Nobel Laureate Demis Hassabis has emphasized the necessity of regulating AI while acknowledging the complexities of doing so effectively. Speaking ahead of the AI Action Summit in Paris, he underscored the challenges of creating regulations for a rapidly evolving technology that remains poorly understood.
“I think it’s important to regulate AI, but it’s important to get the regulations right and that’s hard, when such that the technology itself is not fully understood and it’s so fast moving. And it also needs to be international because AI is going to affect all countries, the whole world, as a technology, it needs to be… there needs to be sort of international cooperation around that. And that’s also tricky in the current environment.”
The AI Action Summit, set to begin on February 10 at the Grand Palais, will bring together global leaders to discuss AI governance at a time of growing concern over how to balance innovation with regulation. Many governments and businesses fear that excessive restrictions could stifle technological progress, while others argue that clear regulations are necessary to mitigate risks.
The summit will also attempt to forge international cooperation, particularly between the United States, China, and nearly 100 other nations, in shaping a framework for AI oversight. An official from the French presidency emphasized that discussions would include perspectives from countries beyond the usual global tech powerhouses.
Key topics on the agenda include mitigating labor market disruptions, ensuring technological sovereignty, and addressing the global distribution of AI advancements.
While AI regulation is often framed around risks and challenges, Google Senior Vice President James Manyika pointed out that discussions should also focus on AI’s potential to drive positive change. He highlighted AI’s ability to improve education, healthcare, and climate change solutions, particularly in developing nations.
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A major talking point at the summit will be how to make AI more accessible worldwide, especially through cheaper AI models developed by companies like France’s Mistral and China’s DeepSeek. These models could bridge the gap between developed and emerging economies, ensuring that AI’s benefits are not concentrated in just a few countries.
One of the most talked-about AI developments in recent weeks has been the rise of DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based AI company that has made waves for its advancements in human-like reasoning technology at significantly lower costs.
However, Hassabis offered a measured response to the excitement, acknowledging the quality of DeepSeek’s engineering while questioning whether it truly represents a breakthrough.
“I mean, just briefly on DeepSeek, it’s an impressive piece of work and I think it’s probably the best work I’ve seen come out of China. But it’s important to understand that, despite the hype, there’s no actual new scientific advance there. It’s using known techniques. Actually, many of the techniques we invented at Google, and at DeepMind, things like AlphaZero and some of the reinforcement learning, they use.”
As discussions around AI governance progress, a non-binding communiqué of principles is under negotiation. If agreed upon, it would mark a significant step in global AI stewardship, with signatures from the U.S., China, and other participating nations. However, sources close to the summit indicate that the primary focus remains on ensuring AI’s benefits are more evenly distributed, rather than allowing dominance by a few major players.
With AI continuing to reshape economies and industries, the debate over how to regulate it without hindering innovation is more pressing than ever. As Hassabis noted, the challenge lies not just in creating regulations, but in getting them right.