Demystifying the Paris AI Action Summit
The definitive guide to how to tackle AI's biggest event of the year as an ordinary citizen
Yesterday, the AI Action Summit organizing team released the full program of the event. The Summit, which officially takes place on February 10 and 11 at the Grand Palais in Paris, will convene. In addition to the official schedule, there are also events for scientists and researchers, cultural days, and of course, a ton of side events hosted by civil society, industry, government ministries, embassies, and so on.
I’ve been waiting for this summit for almost a year – as a Parisian, I couldn’t be more stoked that some of the biggest names in AI are coming to town! And through my weekly newsletters, I’ve been covering developments on the AI Summit, researching events, and so on.
Throughout my research, I’ve noticed that, frustratingly, many of the side events posted on the Elysée’s “Road to the Summit” page are actually not open to the public nor link to the event itself. In an attempt to democratize information of the summit, I’ve put together a mini-guide and an event tracker of mostly-public events.
In short: there are many public events that you can register for today or request an invitation for! You don’t need to receive an “official” invitation to join the Summit – in fact, only a handful of events are closed-doors, invite-only.
Tracks and Themes
There are five main themes of the summit, whose corresponding working groups will be led by different countries:
Public Interest AI (Brazil and Morocco)
Future of Work (Italy)
Innovation and Culture (European Commission)
Trust in AI (South Korea and UK)
Global governance of AI (India and Canada)
Who’s Who at the Summit
Government
As with the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park and the AI Seoul Summit, many governmental representatives, including heads of state, ministers, and diplomats will be present The list of participants at the Seoul Summit should give a rough idea of which governments are expected to attend – including the US, China, EU member states, the UK, India, Japan, Rwanda, the UAE, and more.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been personally invited by President Macron, but it is unclear whether they plan to attend. At the Bletchley Park Summit in 2023, Biden delegated Kamala Harris to attend, as she was the informal “AI czar,” so it’s reasonable to expect that Musk or JD Vance might attend on behalf of the U.S.
Academics
Many academics and researchers are expected to attend, especifically on the Scientific Days. Yoshua Bengio, professor at the Université de Montréal and leader of MILA, is the chair of the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI and will present a finalized version of the report presented at the Seoul Summit.
Stuart Russell, professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and head of CHAI, will host the inaugural International Association for Safe and Ethical Artificial Intelligence (IASEAI) conference (now closed for registrations). Other academics who will speak at his conference include Kate Crawford (USC; author of Atlas of AI), Gillian Hadfield (Johns Hopkins University), and Bart Selman (Cornell University).
Project Syndicate’s event will feature a fireside chat with Macron and Daron Acemoglu, professor at MIT and last year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, who has written a lot about the economic impacts of AI.
Industry
According to POLITICO’s reporting, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Mistral’s Arthur Mensch, Accenture’s Julie Sweet, Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker, Signal’s Meredith Whittaker, and Google Deepmind’s Demis Hassabis will be among the invited guests.
Yann Le Cun from Meta will be present during several panels on the Scientific Days, including a plenary and a fireside chat on February 6.
Stuart Russell’s IASEAI event will also host representatives from IBM and Microsoft.
Civil Society
Almost every civil society organization you can imagine will be in attendance, and many will be hosting their own events. Among them are the Ada Lovelace Institute, the Future of Life Institute, the Future Society, Open Markets Institute, AI Now Institute, the Mozilla Foundation, Humane Intelligence, Common Sense Media, Partnership on AI, Centre pour la Securité de l’IA (CeSIA), Concordia AI, and AI Safety Asia. Representatives from think tanks such as RAND, Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will also be present.
Events Tracker
This tracker will be updated as I become notified of more events. If you want to send your event or any other interesting events my way, please email me at michellesnie@gmail.com. Last edit: January 31 at 4pm
February 5
[Open to public] February 5, 19:00 - 21:00 at Amphithéâtre Erignac, Sciences Po Paris, 13 rue de l’Université | Paris AI Action Summit: What’s Next for AI Governance? by GPAI Policy Lab, Centre pour la Sécurité de l'IA (CeSIA), and Sciences Po Cybersecurity Association | Registration open here
February 6
[Open to public] February 6, 19:30 - 22:00 at Le Grand Breguet | Women in Responsible AI Happy Hour by WISE | Registration open here
Disclosure: I’m a co-host of this meetup!
[Invite only] February 6 & 7 | AI, Science, and Society
[Registrations closed] February 6 at the OECD La Muette Headquarters | International Association for Safe and Ethical Artificial Intelligence (IASEAI)
February 7
[Open to public] February 7, 18:30 - 20:30 at Amphithéâtre Richelieu | « Y a-t-il une IA pour sauver la planète ? » (in French) by Le Conseil national du numérique | Registration open here
[Invite only] February 6 & 7 | AI, Science, and Society
[Registrations closed] February 6 at the OECD La Muette Headquarters | International Association for Safe and Ethical Artificial Intelligence (IASEAI)
February 8
[Open to public] February 8, 9:00 - 18:00 at Jacques Chapsal Amphitheatre, 27 rue Saint-Guillaume | Participatory AI Research & Practice Symposium (PAIRS) | Registration open here
[Open to public] February 8, 9:30 - 17:00 at Learning Planet Institute | Forum des Solutions pour une IA Compatible avec l'Humanité (Forum of Solutions for an AI Compatible with Humanity) by Pause IA | Registration open here
[Open to public] February 8, 16:30 - 19:30 at Warwick Paris | From Oil to Water: Governing AI as a Global Public Good by AI Safety Asia & Asia Society France | Registration open here
[Open to public] February 8, 9:30 - 21:00 | « Culture et IA, enjeux et perspectives » at the Bibliothèque nationale de France – François Mitterrand (BnF) | Registration open here
Includes a “filmmaking with AI” event in partnership with mk2
February 9
[Open to public] February 9, 11:00 - 17:00 at Center Events Paris | AI & Society House @ Paris AI Action Summit by Humane Intelligence | Registration open here
[Open to public] February 9, 20:00 - 22:00 at Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM) | AI Safety Debate with prof. Yoshua Bengio by Existential Risk Observatory | Registration open here
[Applications open] February 9, Pavillon Royal Paris | Paris AI Security Forum ‘25 by the AI Risk Mitigation Fund and FAR.AI | Apply to attend here
[Open to public] February 9 | « Machina Sapiens » at la Conciergerie | No registration required
February 10
[Invite only] February 10 & 11 | The Summit
[Open to public for online attendance] February 10, 14:00 - 18:00 at the Grand Palais | Project Syndicate AI Action Summit Event | Online registration open here
[Open to public] February 10, 18:00 - 20:00 at the Salesforce Paris office | Sustainable AI Networking Happy Hour (AI Energy Score Launch) by Hugging Face & Salesforce | Registration open here
February 11
[Applications open] February 11 at Cheval Blanc Paris Hotel | AI Fringe | Apply by emailing hello@aifringe.org
[Invite only] February 11, 8:30 - 19:00 at Station F | Business Day | Request an invite by emailing businessday@bpifrance.fr
Includes an Artificial Intelligence, Innovation, and Competition event where my colleague Max von Thun will be speaking at
[Applications open] February 11, 8:30 - 13:00 at ICC Headquarters | Advancing global AI governance: exploring adaptive frameworks and the role of sandboxes, by the Datasphere Initiative | Request an invite by emailing tomlinson@thedatasphere.org
[Open to public] February 11, 11:30 - 12:30 at UNESCO | Business roundtable: shaping the future of AI adoption by Thomson Reuters Foundation & UNESCO | Registration open here
[Open to public] February 11, 9:00 - 21:00 at ENS 45 rue d'Ulm, Paris 05, 75230 | AI in the City | Registration open here
February 11, 13:00 - 15:00 at ENS Salle des Actes Room | Realizing the Transformative Power of AI in the Life Sciences: Priorities for Safety & Security by Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Pour Demain | Click here to register for this specific event
[Invite only] February 11, 20:00 at Station F | AI Action Summit Party by STATION F, OpenAI, Hugging Face & H Company | Registration with code from a partner here
I hope this guide proves useful for you! Again, this is a living document that will be updated as I get more information. If you have any tips or want to share your event, email me or comment below. And if you’re in town and want to chat about AI and competition, global governance, or export controls (or just want to have a really good coffee and a croissant), message me!
Did Macron invited the Chinese at Artificial Intelligence Action Summit?