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Groundbreaking AI projects showcased at AI Action Summit in Paris
Inside the Grand Palais at the 2025 AI Action Summit, global leaders and innovators gathered to showcase how artificial intelligence is tackling some of the world’s most urgent challenges. The Paris Peace Forum selected 50 groundbreaking AI projects from over 770 applicants across 111 countries for their potential to drive positive change.
Among the featured projects was Disha, an AI-driven disaster response initiative from the UN Global Pulse Lab. "Our model compares satellite images before and after disasters like floods or earthquakes to identify damage and direct aid efficiently," explained Talea von Lupin.
Another initiative, Phoenix, is using AI for peacebuilding by analyzing social media discourse to detect and address polarization. "We help mediators monitor online narratives in an ethical and participatory way," said Rita Costa Cots, emphasizing the tool's role in conflict resolution.
In healthcare, Care for Rare is leveraging AI to detect rare genetic diseases in newborns, helping doctors diagnose conditions early and save lives. "We involve medical professionals in the design process, so the technology is easy to use from day one," said Jerry John Kponyo.
Meanwhile, Masakhane, an African-led initiative, is working to build AI-powered language tools for indigenous languages. "Many African farmers rely only on their native languages. AI can bridge this gap, empowering them with information and improving livelihoods," explained Tajuddeen Gwadabe.
With selected projects spanning 28 countries—including 22 from the Global South—the summit underscored the power of AI to drive sustainable and equitable progress. From environmental protection to healthcare breakthroughs, the innovations showcased in Paris demonstrate how AI can be a force for good, inclusion, and global development.
This segment, reported by GZERO's own Tony Maciulis, is part of the Global Stage series at the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris, presented by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.
Elon Musk’s government takeover is powered by AI
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE, has sought massive cuts to the federal workforce, in particular targeting USAID, the Department of Education, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, among other agencies.
But Musk isn’t just seizing control of the executive branch; he’s using artificial intelligence as his weapon of choice.
At the Education Department, DOGE representatives have reportedly fed sensitive data, including personally identifiable student loan information, into AI software through Microsoft’s Azure cloud service. A group of students from the University of California sued DOGE in federal court on Friday for allegedly violating federal privacy rules and exceeding their statutory authority. Additionally, congressional Democrats have demanded answers about allegations of a private server used at the Office of Personnel Management; federal workers have sued to stop this, while OPM officials deny it violates the law. And a federal judge on Saturday temporarily halted DOGE access to taxpayer information at the Treasury Department because, the judge wrote, it risks disclosure of “sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.”
At the General Services Administration, a former Tesla engineer is pushing an “AI-first strategy” that involves building a custom chatbot called GSAi to help draft memos faster and adopting an AI coding agent such as the popular assistant Cursor to assist with software development.
Privacy and security advocates warn that the integration of AI software into the federal government could create significant risks — especially if not done carefully. “Using AI to cut spending or reform government operations is dangerous,” said Kit Walsh, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s AI director. “AI isn’t magic; it is generated using data collected by humans and often categorized by humans. Then it provides a way to quickly (and often sloppily) try to reproduce the patterns and categories that have been given to it.”
Calli Schroeder, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said there’s also the risk that AI gobbles up sensitive data and helps train its model on it. “Many AI systems use input data to expand their training datasets in addition to using it to generate a prompt response,” she said. “This not only means security risk if the raw training data is exposed, but also puts the data at risk for further misuse.”
Schroeder noted that these revelations raised fundamental questions about government security protocols if DOGE is indeed using unsecured systems. “Any halfway responsible business or organization has many security procedures and policies about what products you can and cannot connect with company devices,” she said. “It appears that our government either does not meet this incredibly basic level of responsibility and good practice, or no one is enforcing existing policies or procedures.”
The Education Department claims that there’s nothing to worry about with regard to DOGE staff overhauling the department’s systems. “They have been sworn in, have the necessary background checks and clearances, and are focused on making the Department more cost-efficient, effective, and accountable to the taxpayers,” a spokesperson said in a statement to the press. “There is nothing inappropriate or nefarious going on.”
But a lack of transparency has pervaded the entire Musk takeover without comprehensive congressional oversight and with DOGE staffers at times refusing to even give their names while interrogating civil servants. It’s wholly unclear what’s going on mere weeks into the administration with major changes at multiple government departments and agencies — all seemingly with an element of AI. “We deserve lawful, transparent, and accountable decisions in government operations,” Walsh said. “It’s difficult to imagine that the technology at work here is fit for the purpose of making spending and personnel decisions — and Americans deserve better than to have to guess at how those decisions are being made.”DeepSeek logo seen on a cell phone.
First US DeepSeek ban could be on the horizon
Lawmakers in the US House of Representatives want to ban DeepSeek’s AI models from federal devices.
Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Darin LaHood, a Democrat from New Jersey and a Republican from Illinois, respectively, introduced a bill on Thursday called the “No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act.” It would work similarly to the ban of TikTok on federal devices, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in December 2022. Both bans apply to all government-owned electronics, including phones and computers.
DeepSeek’s R1 large language model is a powerful alternative to the top models from Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI — the first Chinese model to take the AI world by storm. But its privacy policy indicates that it can send user data to China Mobile, a Chinese state-owned telecom company that’s sanctioned in the US.
Since DeepSeek shot to fame in January, Australia and Taiwan have blocked access on government devices; Italy has banned it nationwide for citizens on privacy grounds. Congress may go further and try to ban DeepSeek in the United States, but so far no members have proposed doing that.
French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech during the plenary session of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, France, on Feb. 11, 2025.
France’s nuclear power supply to fuel AI
France has real AI ambitions — and nuclear energy might be the key to unlocking them. Ahead of the AI Action Summit, which kicked off on Monday at the Grand Palais in Paris, the French government announced $113 billion in new investments in artificial intelligence at the summit, investments that will be powered by 1 gigawatt of dedicated nuclear power.
The initiative, spearheaded by the British data center company FluidStack, will begin construction in the third quarter of 2025. It seeks to achieve a similar scale to Stargate, the US government-backed project to expand the data center capacity of industry leader OpenAI.
The Wall Street Journal reports that France has 57 nuclear reactors at 18 separate plants, generating two-thirds of its national energy supply from nuclear, a clean energy source. Additionally, it had surplus energy last year, which it exported.The Amazon logo is being displayed on a smartphone in this photo illustration in Brussels, Belgium, on June 10, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Amazon’s spending blitz, Cal State gives everyone ChatGPT, a $50 AI model, France and UAE shake hands
500,000: More than half a million new people will gain access to a specialized version of ChatGPT after OpenAI struck a deal with California State University, which has 460,000 students and 63,000 faculty members across 23 campuses. Students and faculty will be able to use a specialized version of the chatbot that can assist with tutoring, study guides, and administrative tasks for staff. The price of the deal is unclear.
50: Researchers at Stanford University and the University of Washington trained a large language model they say is capable of “reasoning” like the higher-end models from OpenAI and Anthropic. The catch? They did it while spending only $50 in compute credits. The new model, called s1, is “distilled” from a Google model called Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental, a process that allows training fine-tuned models based on larger ones.
1: France and the United Arab Emirates struck a deal to develop a 1 gigawatt AI data center on Thursday, ahead of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris. It’s unclear where the data center will be located, but the agreement means that it will serve both French and Emirati AI efforts.
US Vice President JD Vance delivers a speech during the plenary session of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, France, on Feb. 11, 2025.
JD Vance preaches innovation above all
Speaking at the AI Action Summit in Paris, France, US Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday laid out a vision of technological innovation above all — especially above regulation or international accords.
“I’m not here this morning to talk about AI safety, which was the title of the conference a couple of years ago. I’m here to talk about AI opportunity,” Vance said. “We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry.” The vice president told a group of heads of state that the regulations that the European Union has placed on tech, including the Digital Services Act and AI Act, have been onerous.
Additionally, the US and UK did not sign onto a new international agreement put forward at the summit — which China, India, and France agreed to. The accord lays out norms for AI safety and sustainable energy use.
Europe already achieved first-mover status in regulating artificial intelligence software, largely a Silicon Valley export. But the Trump administration has signaled that the gap between America’s hands-off approach to AI and Europe’s hands-on attempt to rein it in will only widen in the coming years.
France's AI Action Summit maps a European vision for AI
“France has a special message in AI,” says Justin Vaïsse, director general of the Paris Peace Forum. Speaking to GZERO’s Tony Maciulis at the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris, Vaïsse highlighted France’s diplomatic and technological role in shaping global AI governance. The shift from an AI “safety” summit, as it was called in 2023 and 2024, to this year’s “action” summit reflects the growing urgency to balance AI innovation with AI regulation as European leaders reconsider the impact of early AI laws on competitiveness. Meanwhile, tensions over US-Europe AI policy remain, with Vaïsse making clear: “We certainly have a right to regulate.”
This conversation is part of the Global Stage series at the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris, presented by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio embraces Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo at the end of their joint news conference at the National Palace in Guatemala City, on Feb. 5, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Guatemala to take more deportees, Trump vs. transgender athletes, Google axes AI-weapon ban, Taliban shuts women’s radio, Israelis like Trump’s Gaza plan, Scientists unwrap ancient scroll
40: During a press conference with visiting Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo announced Wednesday that his country will accept 40% more deportation flights from the United States. Guatemala also agreed to the creation of a task force for border control aimed at fighting “all forms of transnational crime.” Under the previous administration, Guatemala received roughly 14 deportation flights per week.
20: President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order that aims to bar federal funding for schools that allow transgender athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, claiming it violates Title IX. The order conflicts with laws in 20 states protecting transgender people from discrimination and allowing them to play on sports teams. It remains to be seen whether any of those states will file lawsuits to try to override the order.
2: Alphabet — Google’s parent company — has updated its AI principles, removing a previous pledge not to use AI for defense or surveillance purposes that “cause or are likely to cause overall harm.” Google’s head of AI on Tuesday said the move reflected a changing world and that it “supports national security.” The news comes just two months after AI leader OpenAI made a similar policy change.
12: In another blow to women’s rights in Afghanistan, officers from the Taliban’s Ministry of Information and Culture on Tuesday raided andshut down the country’s only women’s radio station and arrested two employees. The Taliban, who closed at least 12 media outlets last year, blamed the suspension on violations of broadcasting policy. Kabul-based Radio Begum was not only run by women but also released content aimed at women’s education.
80: Results from a Jewish People Policy Institute Israel Index poll this weekshow that approximately 80% of Israeli Jews support President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate Gaza’s entire population. The same poll found that less than 15% believe the plan is immoral.
2,000: Scientists used X-ray imaging and AI to virtually “unwrap” ascroll uncovered in Herculaneum, Pompeii’s less famous neighbor that was also buried in the infamous 79 CE eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. It was announced Wednesday that researchers from Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and the Vesuvius Challenge were the first to peek inside the scroll in nearly 2,000 years — and while more time is needed to fully decipher the full text, they believe it contains a work of philosophy.