The international consensus on regulating the safe use of artificial intelligence (AI) looks to have been shattered at the Paris AI Summit on Monday and Tuesday.

The Guardian reported that both the United States and United Kingdom did not sign an international AI declaration that pledged an “open”, “inclusive” and “ethical” approach to the technology’s development.

The refusal of the two nations to sign the declaration dashes hopes of a concerted approach to developing and regulating the technology, as global tensions were exposed to the world on Monday and Tuesday.

Simmering tensions

French president Emmanuel Macron had begun the AI Action Summit in Paris this week by sharing a montage of deepfake videos of himself merging his face with clips from popular films, TV series and influencer videos.

But international tensions soon surfaced, especially after US Vice-President JD Vance had arrived at the Paris AI Summit to criticise Europe’s “excessive regulation” of technology and warn against co-operating with China – citing the risks of partnering with “authoritarian” regimes.

Vance also levelled criticism at two other EU regulatory measures, namely the Digital Services Act and GDPR.

Vance had reportedly started his speech by cautioning against an excessive focus on safety, in an apparent criticism of the first global AI Safety Summit in the UK in November 2023 – which resulted in the “Bletchley Declaration” – signed at the time by the UK, US, China, and the EU.

The Republican VP reportedly indicated that he thought the Bletchley Park meeting was too cautious, referring to gatherings about cutting-edge technology that can be “too self-conscious, too risk averse”.

China meanwhile seemed to criticise the AI Safety Institute, a state-backed international body.

Fu Ying, a former Chinese government official and now an academic at Tsinghua University in Beijing, also engaged in a testy exchange with Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian academic considered one of the “Godfathers” of AI.

Fu Ying spoke of the “risks” involved with AI development and said open source models, such as those developed by Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek, can be easier to regulate.

Prof Bengio disagreed, saying open source models could be easier to exploit, but acknowledged it was easier to spot issues with an open source model such as DeepSeek in contrast to OpenAI’s closed-source ChatGPT.

International declaration

In the end both the US and UK refused to sign an AI declaration, although it seems for different reasons.

The declaration states priorities include “ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all” and “making AI sustainable for people and the planet”.

The declaration was backed by 60 other signatories on Tuesday, including France, China, India, Japan, Australia and Canada.

A UK government spokesperson was quoted by the Guardian newspaper as stating that the declaration had not gone far enough in addressing global governance of AI and the technology’s impact on national security.

“We agreed with much of the leaders’ declaration and continue to work closely with our international partners,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying. “This is reflected in our signing of agreements on sustainability and cybersecurity today at the Paris AI Action summit.”

“However, we felt the declaration didn’t provide enough practical clarity on global governance, nor sufficiently address harder questions around national security and the challenge AI poses to it,” the UK government reported said.

Asked if Britain had declined to sign because it wanted to follow the US lead, Keir Starmer’s spokesperson reportedly said they were “not aware of the US reasons or position” on the declaration.

A UK government source rejected the suggestion that Britain was trying to curry favour with the US.