00:00So Viva Tech is where business meets innovation.
00:02We're expecting this year's event to be the biggest ever,
00:05attracting more than 90,000 people to the French capital
00:08over the next four jam-packed days.
00:11I want to get to our Tech Trends Editor, Rudy.
00:16I'm very excited to see you again this year. How are you?
00:18I'm good, Apten. Good to see you.
00:20Yeah, so I want to know, it's day one.
00:23It's always that kind of pre-jitters that everyone has.
00:25You feel it. It's very palpable on the floor.
00:27What are you watching today?
00:28I mean, to start off today, on the main stage,
00:31we're going to see a presentation, a world premiere
00:34by a French consortium of companies,
00:37some of the biggest tech and mobility companies in France.
00:43And they're going to present their concept car,
00:45the H1ST Vision, with H1 standing for Human First.
00:50Going to have a lot of technology in there.
00:52Basically, Soft Republic with the accent.
00:55That's that group of companies, which includes Orange, Thales,
01:01Renault on the car side.
01:03So, lots of technology companies, mobility companies.
01:06And they are going to present more than 20 French innovations,
01:10they say, in there.
01:11We don't know what that car is going to look like.
01:13We already know that an Israeli startup, Car Dome,
01:17has said that their AI voice technology is going to be used in that car.
01:21So, it will be very interesting to see what that will bring.
01:23Obviously, France having a large automotive industry,
01:28which, yeah, we'll see how they can innovate in face of what the German car makers,
01:33the Chinese car makers, of course, the U.S. car makers are doing.
01:37Absolutely.
01:38A big push by Chinese automakers, too, especially with those EVs.
01:42Absolutely.
01:42I mean, China ruling the roost in terms of EVs, absolutely.
01:47Yeah, and I think Elon Musk even admitted BYD is quite impressed with what they're doing,
01:51which, of course, is like the Tesla of China.
01:54But, of course, going global.
01:56You know, amongst all the themes you're watching,
01:58I think there's one big standout.
02:00What is that?
02:01Oh, yeah.
02:01There is one trend to rule them all, and that is AI.
02:05There's just no way around it.
02:07AI is everywhere this year at VivaTech.
02:09And like never before, I think the world really changed
02:13with the release of ChatGPT3 in November,
02:17and it has really opened up people's eyes to what is possible.
02:21It's allowed people to dream of what's possible with AI.
02:24It's also raised some concerns of what is possible with AI.
02:27But, yeah, that's the big theme.
02:28We've got Jan LeCun, who is the chief AI scientist of Meta,
02:34who will be on the main stage early this afternoon.
02:36He was here already last year,
02:38but the context has entirely changed.
02:40And we've seen, you know, reports on what the impact of AI may be.
02:45In March, Goldman Sachs put out a report saying that it could affect,
02:51to some degree of automation, of AI automation,
02:54could affect up to two-thirds of jobs.
02:56And basically, generative AI might replace up to a fourth of jobs.
03:01At the same time, they also see many benefits from these productivity gains.
03:05They say that, in time, AI may boost GDP growth by 7% a year.
03:10So the opportunities and the risks are tremendous, are tremendous.
03:14Wow, yeah, and it's really interesting that OpenAI was the one to kind of make AI mainstream,
03:19and now it's like Google and Meta are rushing to say,
03:22hey, we're here too.
03:23I mean, OpenAI is still definitely in the game.
03:26What is, of course, very interesting is that the CEO of OpenAI has been calling for regulation of AI.
03:32Which is interesting because everyone's been pushing these large language models into the public.
03:41And it's definitely raising some concerns about, you know, where are we headed?
03:45Are we sure that we're not going a little bit too fast?
03:47So there'll be some discussion about that at VivaTech this year as well.
03:52Absolutely, definitely a pivotal moment in history.
03:54I have one more question.
03:56We have French President Emmanuel Macron expected to join us here at VivaTech later today
04:00and expected to also speak about AI.
04:03What are you watching there?
04:03Right, no, very interesting because we, you know,
04:06I think it's fair to say that France is not a frontrunner in AI.
04:09If you look at the Tortoise Global AI Index, France ranks 10th.
04:15And if you look at the Stanford Index, which is a little bit older, 2021,
04:18they had France even lower down.
04:20And that's mostly because of research and development getting low grades.
04:24Because France actually gets good grades on what the government is doing.
04:29So we'll see what he has to say about that.
04:32Very interesting is that he has on stage a few startup executives with him,
04:37including the CEO of a French generative AI company, Mistral AI.
04:43AI, they are just a month old and they already raised 105 million euros in seed money
04:49for a valuation, reportedly for 240 million euros, you know, for a month old company.
04:56That is not bad.
04:57And that just shows you how hot AI is right now.
05:00Wow, absolutely.
05:01Lots of opportunities, but lots of interesting discussion for sure.
05:05Well, Rudy, thank you so much.
05:06We'll check in with you throughout the morning.
05:08Speaking of artificial intelligence, there is a world of possibilities,
05:12but also a world of questions.
05:14So some of the architects of AI are actually claiming that it could endanger humankind.
05:20But investors, meanwhile, are very excited about the possibilities.
05:23So how can a society benefit?
05:25What are the tangible improvements to our life?
05:28And how do startups exploit this huge opportunity in the making?
05:33Thank you.
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