France, US clash over G7 effort on AI safety

The U.S. government has scuttled a French push for the G7 to coordinate on advanced AI safety, with a White House official calling it “unnecessary bureaucracy.” France’s digital minister Anne Le Hénanff told a French Senate hearing on Wednesday that she held two ministerial meetings in September and October to secure G7 commitments to a high-level working group to test frontier AI — the most advanced models — and share information about risks and incidents.

That effort “did not reach a successful conclusion” because the U.S. wanted to pursue its own approach, the French minister said.

“They are not prepared, at this stage, to issue a joint statement with the other six G7 nations, and have asked us to wait for the findings of their own assessment,” said Le Hénanff.