Visit of Jean-Noël Barrot to India

The French Minister Delegate for Digital Affairs, H.E. Mr Jean-Noël Barrot was in India to participate in the Ministerial Council of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) Summit on 13th December 2023, as well as to advance bilateral cooperation on digital technology.

This is Minister Barrot’s second official visit to India. It also came on the heels of the European Union’s landmark agreement on the AI Act, which would make the EU the first democracy in the world to establish a comprehensive set of rules on AI, in order to foster innovation while ensuring protection of citizens’ rights.

As a co-founding country of GPAI, France strongly believes in the need for international cooperation to support and guide the responsible development of artificial intelligence that is consistent with human rights. At this Summit, Minister Barrot highlighted the GPAI’s key role in the international governance of AI, the need to muster GPAI expertise on pressing issues, such as the opportunities and challenges of generative AI, as well as the way forward for further strengthening the GPAI’s functioning.

On this occasion, Minister Barrot held a bilateral meeting with Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Hon’ble Minister of State, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), to discuss international governance of AI and follow up on ongoing bilateral cooperation on digital technology. This cooperation is grounded in France and India’s shared vision of digital technologies that empower citizens, reduce inequalities, and promote sustainable development. It is based on the 2019 Indo-French Roadmap on Cybersecurity and Digital Technology, and received further impetus during the historic visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Paris on July 14th, 2023, when the two countries adopted the Roadmap 2047 and renewed the MoU on digital technology between the MeitY and the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty of the French Republic.

At the Summit, Minister Barrot also met AI experts and held bilateral talks with counterparts from other participating countries.

In the course of this visit, Minister Barrot also visited the headquarters of the Unique Identification Authority of India, where he learnt more about India’s digital public infrastructure and was given a demonstration on India’s Aadhaar scheme.

Lastly, the French minister met representatives of India’s innovation ecosystem, notably in AI, and French digital tech companies to discuss ways of boosting ties between the French and the Indian tech ecosystems. As Europe’s number one tech hub, France is keen to welcome more Indian tech talents and start-ups, which can benefit from accelerator programmes, French Tech talent visas, and government support.

French Minister for Digital Affairs, H.E. Mr Jean-Noël Barrot’s remarks at the Press conference of GPAI Summit

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Thank you very much, Minister. I would like to thank India for hosting this important summit at a decisive moment. A decisive moment because of the acceleration of AI development that we’ve been witnessing over the past 12 months.

Yet work had started with GPAI for the past couple of years with the 29 members of this Global Partnership that are ready to play an important role in shaping the governance of AI and defining what the best use cases will be in the future.

An important summit first, because we adopted the New Delhi Declaration, but also because we discussed the future of GPAI. We have very high ambitions for this partnership. We wanted it to be, as the minister said, THE platform where our community of partners can turn to find the solutions developed by the pool of experts, for agriculture, for health, for climate change and more.

But we also want GPAI to be an inclusive platform that is open to likeminded partners, that share our vision of a human-centric AI, and our attachment to democracy.

In order to achieve this in the next few months under the Indian presidency of GPAI, we will be discussing how we can pool some of our expert resources with that of the OECD in order to extend our reach and our ability to come up with the best possible solutions for the governance and the deployment of AI for the good of our people.

I want to congratulate Japan for deciding to set up a third expert support centre in Japan along with the centre in Canada and the centre in France. It is now clear that the sun never sets on GPAI. And this new addition, this third centre, will be instrumental in supporting the work of our pool of experts that were able today to present the results of their work for the past year, and their work programme for the year to come.

And that is at the heart of what we want to accomplish with GPAI.