New Delhi: Benefits should be equal, not for a few: Anne Bouverot
AI promises significant benefits across areas, but the key is to ensure these benefits are for everyone, not just a few said Anne Bouverot, the French President’s Special Envoy for AI.
Speaking to Anirudh Suri on the podcast AI Futures: The Road to India AI Summit 2026, Bouverot also discussed emerging challenges in AI, and the areas of opportunity for countries such as France and India. Edited excerpts:
What do you see as some of the new challenges that have emerged in AI in the last year?
At the Paris Summit last year, we had the first global conversation on AI and its implications on energy consumption and climate. This conversation has not abated, with countries racing to organize more data centres, energy supply chains and AI development plans.
The second challenge is the impact of AI on the future of work. At the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in 2023, there were dire predictions that half of the jobs would disappear within two years, which has not happened yet. However, there is potential for great disruption. This has drawn attention both on the policy front as well as from workers. The third challenge is the societal impacts of AI. How will it change education, or health care? There are great benefits, but we need to ensure that these benefits are equal and not just for a happy few.
As companies start to adopt AI more, will the impact of AI on jobs accelerate very quickly?
In a macro view, I don’t necessarily expect that. The work I did with Philippe Aghion, that helped him get his Nobel Prize, looked at innovation across ages. In the various waves of digital innovation, yes, jobs are displaced, and you need to retrain people, but you also get a lot of new jobs.
Cyber security is very important, with AI opening up more points of vulnerability. Similarly, in coding, we can expect to see a lot of benefits from using AI. Once code is produced by these AI systems, you need to check and validate it. That will change the work of IT engineers, but we will continue to need them.
AI and health. I was in India in November and saw some great applications of AI helping with early detection of tuberculosis or potential blindness linked with diabetes. In France, I’ve seen some great applications on early detection of breast cancer.
The summit was co-chaired by Prime Minister Modi and President Macron, and we had heads of states from all over the world and CEOs and researchers. This multi-stakeholder structure was really very helpful.
It took place at a very particular geopolitical moment, with the Stargate announcement in the US and then the news of Deep Seek in China. We showcased startups from all over the world – Mistral in France, Helsing in Germany, and Cohere in Canada. These developments showed that the race was still open, and that others can have a very meaningful role in AI. That’s one of the big takeaways for me from the Paris summit.
We also announced very important global initiatives, like the Coalition for Sustainable AI to help mitigate the climate impact of AI. We were particularly pleased to have the announcement of the next summit in India, because the prior summits had been held in the Northern Hemisphere.
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