- 18 hours ago
The global economy is entering a new phase. AI, industrial policy, energy transitions, and shifting trade flows are forcing countries to rethink how they attract investment, create jobs, and build long-term competitiveness. What separates the economies that will lead the next decade from those that will struggle to keep pace? Perspectives from three regions shaping the future of global growth.
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TechTranscript
00:00Good afternoon, bon après-midi.
00:03Minister Goyal, Minister Elmery, Minister Le Maire,
00:07it's a pleasure to come together with you today at a very critical moment in time.
00:13The global economy is entering a new phase.
00:16Emerging technologies, geopolitical conflicts and shrinking resources
00:20are dramatically changing the preconditions for our economies and global competition.
00:26And in the next 30 minutes we want to figure out what the new growth playbook for this era looks
00:33like.
00:34So Minister Goyal, let's start with you.
00:37Given the most common narrative, the US and China are battling in a global tech race.
00:43What remains unclear is which roles are left for the regions you represent.
00:48Are emerging Asia, the Gulf region and Europe simply lagging behind
00:52or have we merely become spectators?
00:55What's your perspective and why?
00:58Well, I think VivaTech itself represents the future.
01:07So I don't think we are left behind.
01:10We will be at the forefront of the race going forward.
01:16Nobody has a monopoly on tech.
01:19Tech is something that comes from that urge, from that burning fire in the belly, from growing aspirations,
01:31that willingness to put in your best for a brighter future for the world.
01:38And my sense is that countries in Asia, countries in Africa are going to be the center point of new
01:47innovations, new tech.
01:49Because that's where the growth imperatives are.
01:53That's where young men and women are dreaming big and looking to provide for a better future for their families,
02:05for their country.
02:06I would see new frontiers emerging in these areas.
02:12While, of course, there is a pretty much a technological divide today between certain countries, the US, China are far
02:23ahead of many other countries.
02:27Europe would be somewhere in between.
02:32We in India are finding a lot of resonance with the new world of technology because we provide a very
02:41powerful enablement of every aspect of technology development.
02:47We have a youthful population.
02:50That's important.
02:51Our average age is under 30 years.
02:53We are the world's fastest growing large economy.
02:56So a lot of economic activity which spurs innovation.
03:02We have 1.4 billion people generating demand.
03:07And that gives us economies of scale.
03:11We have data at a fraction of the cost it costs in other countries.
03:15We have abundant power to meet the needs of data centers, computing capacity and all of that.
03:26And we produce the world's largest number of STEM graduates, the techies in science and engineering and technology.
03:35Every year, 1.4 million people.
03:38All of this collectively make India a very compelling case to bridge that technological divide.
03:47And as you may be aware, India never thinks only of itself.
03:51For me, my brother Abdullah, the Middle East, the African continent, the other parts of Asia.
04:00The global south is our family.
04:05We need to talk about partnerships later on.
04:09But let's first start with you, Minister Emery.
04:11This panel is meant to figure out the growth playbook for the new era.
04:16But I'm not sure if it looks the same for everyone here given how different your starting positions are.
04:22The UAE is sitting on enormous oil wealth and these resources are finite.
04:30So the country is now determined to transform into an AI nation.
04:34What does it take to fundamentally change the economic foundations of a country?
04:39And what are the major challenges?
04:41I think, first of all, I'm very happy to be here in VivaTech in between the great two ministers of
04:48economy.
04:51I try to as well be as humble as possible and say a few words about what we're doing in
04:58a very, very agile economy in the UAE.
05:01When we look at, first of all, the change of economy and how the economy operates in the UAE, it
05:07has diversified for the last six years.
05:09Post-COVID era, the UAE showed that the UAE's economy is a totally different aspect.
05:16We have seen as well, you know, we exited OPEC, for instance, the last couple of months.
05:23Not because, you know, we have anything with the OPEC, but we are a diversified economy.
05:29We are 76% of our economy is non-oil.
05:34Therefore, we are moving away from the oil era to something new, to something more diversified.
05:40And I think that's kind of the message forward and the aspect of bringing AI and technology into place.
05:47Now, when we look at the UAE's investment into AI and the adaptation of it, it's not from a technological
05:54perspective,
05:54but it's from a productivity thinking.
05:59Technologies in the last industrial revolutions, they start with farming, it all was about productivity.
06:08AI today is about productivity as well.
06:11And how do we look at AI and productivity when it comes at firm level, at SMEs levels?
06:16How do we look at that?
06:17And that's the first mindset, think, and shift that we see in government.
06:22The second part is when we see that, we need as well the government to think about AI as platforms.
06:28And the third one is to think about how do we adopt AI faster than the SMEs as government.
06:34And once we see that, we see the UAE's government today.
06:37Last month, we announced that the UAE is adopting agentic AI on government cabinets.
06:45Each and every ministry has to change within the next two years, adopting AI.
06:50We are training the government employees.
06:53Therefore, government adaptation of technology from a productivity perspective
06:58will change the whole ecosystem to do that.
07:02We are attracting a lot of talents, the thinking to it, the research to it.
07:06UAE is becoming a place because the government is changing the aspect of AI.
07:12Two days ago, there is a new federal government that has been created,
07:16the federal government of AI implementation in the UAE, run by my colleague Amar Al-Ulama,
07:22the Minister of State for AI.
07:24And that might say as well, we'll push forward as well,
07:27how the government changes and employs the AI into perspective.
07:31I very much like the idea of ministries raising each other in the AI adoption.
07:36Race.
07:37Minister de Maire, Europe has once been known as the home of explorers and inventors.
07:43Now some are joking we are becoming the world's museum,
07:46where the Chinese come to marvel at how previous generations lived and worked.
07:51One big challenge for Europe is still to overcome its innovators' dilemma.
07:55Companies that need to fulfill existing quality standards and criteria,
07:59they are afraid to try new processes and to change their running systems.
08:04So what would you write in Europe's growth playbook?
08:07Well, first of all, I'm very happy to be here with my best friends on the international stage.
08:14Well, I would say that Europe failed to catch up the tech revolution at the end of the 90s.
08:20And this explains why we are lagging behind on productivity, on growth, on innovation.
08:26It is not too late to catch up.
08:29And it is not too late to be successful on tech for all European countries.
08:34Provided that we are lucid and that we are not only talking but taking strong decisions.
08:43Sovereignty is a very nice word.
08:46But sovereignty is bullshit if it is not based on strong, reliable and long-term commitment.
08:55When you look at the tech, there are three key layers.
08:58And you have to go into the details to understand what is at stake for Europe.
09:03The first layer, this is the hardware.
09:07This is the point on which we are very, very, very late.
09:12I would say 10 to 15 years compared to the US, to China and to Taiwan.
09:19If you want to be independent, you need to bridge the gap between China and the US
09:24and the first layer, which is the hardware and the production of chips.
09:29I mean, not only the useful chips, but also the most productive one, the two nanometers chips,
09:36to really break the deal with the other continents and to be able to produce the state-of-the-art
09:44chips
09:45on the European continent.
09:47Which means a new approach, which would not be a technocratic approach decided by the Commission
09:52on the basis of public money, because there is no public money anymore and no fiscal space,
09:58but a new approach based on off-tech commitments by the big industries in Europe,
10:04by the creation of the Capital Markets Union to get enough money to put 100 billion euros a year
10:11for the production of chips on the European soil, meaning 1,000 billion euros for the next decade to be
10:20independent on chips.
10:22The second layer, this is cloud. And we have everything to be successful.
10:27We have big companies that are doing very well, like OVH in France, and we need to support those companies,
10:35because you are 90% dependent on Google, on Amazon, on Microsoft.
10:42And this is totally stupid, totally foolish, because the day President Trump decides to cut the link between Amazon and
10:53France,
10:53decides to cut the link between Microsoft and the French administration,
10:58taking into account that half of the French administration are relying on Microsoft.
11:03This is the end of the French administration and the end of our independence.
11:09So let's invest on the European cloud and on the European technologies on the second layer as soon as possible.
11:17And the third layer, this is artificial intelligence, and we have the best ones in France and in Europe.
11:26We have Mistral, of course, we have Arthur Mensch, we have a lot of small tech companies
11:31that are just waiting for us to give the signal, to take the decisions,
11:36and to pave the way for real technological independence in Europe.
11:41In less than one decade, we need to have a European Google.
11:45Thank you for those clear words.
11:47Minister Goyal, over the last years, India has become the world's back office,
11:52doing IT services for companies all over the world.
11:55Now AI is starting to automate a growing share of this work.
12:00How does your country adapt? Do you need to rewrite your playbook?
12:05I think India adapts very fast.
12:10I'll take you back in time to the 1990s, late 90s, when the world thought in the change of the
12:21millennium,
12:2299 to 2000, there's going to be some collapse of all international systems.
12:29That's where India got its first entry into the IT sector and software and stuff like that.
12:36Of course, nothing happened on 1st January 2000, except that India never looked back after that.
12:43And our industry just kept growing and growing, and it's today a half a trillion dollar industry,
12:49providing millions of people jobs directly and other many millions indirectly in the ecosystem.
12:57So my sense is, having taken upon ourselves that we're going to be part of the new emerging technologies,
13:05that we are not going to be left behind, whether it's in compute capability,
13:10whether it's in using authentic AI for different processes,
13:16whether we are, the way we are encouraging our innovators in med tech and agri tech,
13:24FinTech, we have almost become leader of the world with our digital payment system being the most cost effective,
13:31the UPI, which is now launched in France also incidentally.
13:36Yesterday I launched it at the Gallery Lafayette in Nice.
13:42So India has that ability to adapt.
13:46Our IT companies are retraining their people to think AI, to pose the right questions.
13:56Ultimately, we will have to have human-centric technologies.
13:59And these human beings who are comfortable with binary code, comfortable with technology,
14:07once retrained, we'll be able to ask the right questions, find the right solutions,
14:13be the best cyber security experts, help the world when databases get corrupted with bots.
14:21There's a lot of things going to happen.
14:23So as each AI model goes faster and more superior, and now with AI creating its own new versions,
14:32we're going to have challenges of technology, we're going to have challenges of one set of AI agents attacking another,
14:41and messing up databases, giving you ridiculous results.
14:46Even today, take two models and give them the same question, problem statement, and you get ridiculously different answers.
14:56So I think the last word has not yet been written.
14:59We will write that last word with our talent and with the young Indian brain focusing on this subject.
15:08And talking about those challenges, Minister Emery, writing a growth playbook is one thing, implementing it is another.
15:15For the UAE to become an AI nation, it needs its small and medium-sized businesses.
15:21So the problem is, that's exactly where the gap is largest.
15:26Many SMEs lack the data, talent, capital and tools to use AI at scale and those authentic systems.
15:34How can governments enable SMEs to make AI a real productivity driver?
15:39This is a very important question. It's a debate.
15:44How can government enact with SMEs and create more of AI movements?
15:48Now in the UAE, we have a great example.
15:51The movements as we see today, we are the second or third country in the world that attracts AI talent
15:58today in the world.
16:00And that's something that we are very proud of.
16:02And that attraction by itself can create the first basis of foundations having the exact talent that you need to
16:08implement AI companies.
16:11Today, I'm here in VivaTech. I have 10 companies with me, joining me on this delegation.
16:15And all of them is implementing AI within the system.
16:18Now the talent is there, the technology is there.
16:21That's the kind of thinking that the UAE gives the world.
16:24Now what India can give, India can give scale.
16:28UAE can give capital, connectivity and talent.
16:33And France can help us as well build that kind of dimension into bigger scale into Europe.
16:38Now I think we need to use this India, UAE, France approach of thinking.
16:44Because I want to answer a bit of what the question went to my brother Bruno LeMay about the sovereignty
16:51of AI.
16:52And I think it's important to say sovereignty doesn't mean isolation.
16:57That's fine.
16:58And there's no one country that can build AI capacity alone.
17:02If there is one government out there that can say, I can build my own AI capacity, I would love
17:07to see it.
17:08Because it depends on talent.
17:10It depends on microchips into chips, into research.
17:14There's a lot of semiconductors.
17:16There's a lot of work that goes together.
17:19And this is a very important aspect.
17:21But there's a couple of foundations.
17:23There should be the way of how do we compute these AIs, these technologies.
17:28How do we govern data?
17:30What data governance means?
17:33How do we look at the regulation aspects?
17:35And then how do we look at the talent pool that we have and build that talent pool over and
17:40over again?
17:41So there is a huge component here to answer that question is how government can enable AI and the foundations.
17:48Now the UAE have done a great job.
17:50We've seen it.
17:50We have the talent.
17:52We have the companies.
17:53And we see that kind of push.
17:54But the UAE and India and France cannot work alone.
17:57We need to connect together because there's a lot of data.
18:00There's a lot of information.
18:01There's a lot of talent, IP, regulations.
18:04And there's a lot of work that needs to happen for the future of AI and technology in the SMEs
18:10to go forward.
18:11And like I said, sovereignty doesn't mean isolation.
18:15Sovereignty means sovereignty.
18:17And it means as well that we need to work together as countries.
18:19It doesn't mean to close yourself off to others.
18:23So, Minister Le Maire, I started this discussion by describing the actual technological competition as a race.
18:30And I think it's very fitting that technology is developing faster than ever.
18:34Let's stay with this image for a moment.
18:37It means that both governments and companies have to keep their eyes on the road.
18:42And right now that means keeping up in AI adoption.
18:46But that also can make you lose sight of what's at the horizon.
18:50So, what are the bigger shifts driven by AI and other technologies that will fundamentally change how we create value
18:57and grow our economies?
18:58And what needs to be done to qualify for the next round of the race?
19:02I think you're right in explaining that AI is a race.
19:09If you want to win the race, you need to change your mind and you need to have some very
19:16specific and clear priorities.
19:18And I fully agree with my friend, sovereignty does not mean isolation.
19:23Sovereignty means being sovereign and independent and less dependent from the US and China.
19:28It does not mean isolation.
19:30And I look forward to cooperating more with India and the UAE on tech.
19:34For three key words, three topics if you want to win the race.
19:39The first one is innovation.
19:42We must keep in mind that innovation comes before regulation.
19:50Unfortunately, within the European countries, we are very keen in regulating the technologies that we don't possess.
19:58Of course, you will never possess the technologies if you are not innovative.
20:01First, innovation before regulation.
20:05I'm not saying innovation instead of regulation, but before regulation.
20:11Second, markets.
20:12I don't want the tech to be driven by the technocrats from Brussels or from any other countries.
20:21I want the tech to be driven by private companies and by the market.
20:26Because if you don't have off-tech commitments by Airbus, by Siemens, by big industrial companies in Europe, you will
20:36never build factories for chips, for two nanometers chips.
20:40Because TSMC will never come to Europe and to a country which would not be a market-driven country which
20:48gives reliable funding for their technologies.
20:51And the third key word is money.
20:56Finance is not my enemy.
21:00Finance is the friend of the development of the big tech companies.
21:05And I'm fed up to have all the small companies, all the startups being developed on the European soil at
21:13the expenses of European funding.
21:16And when it comes to develop the companies to scale up and to become big companies and maybe someday hyperscalers,
21:24then they move to the US because we lack money and we lack private funding on the European soil.
21:30So it's time to have more risk investment companies on the European soil.
21:37It's time to have a capital market union and to have an integrated financial market in Europe.
21:43It's time to put as much money as possible on the tech to be independent.
21:48My very last word will be that to win a race, you need a leader.
21:55Even if you have three, four, five, ten competitors, you need someone to lead the race.
22:00And my strongest belief is that this is up to France, which has all the skills, all the talents, all
22:08the labs, all the determination, all the young willingness to run the race in Europe to become the first tech
22:17country on the European soil.
22:19And it has Viva Tech at all.
22:21And it's possible.
22:23Minister Goyal, in the US we are witnessing a remarkable shift right now.
22:28The place where the AI industry is growing fastest is also the place where the backlash is strongest.
22:35So students boot the former Google CEO during a speech on AI, communities are trying to block new data centers,
22:42and someone even threw a firebomb at the home of the Open AI CEO.
22:47So there's real anger out there because people fear losing their jobs and seeing the gap between rich and poor
22:53grow even wider.
22:55What kind of social contract is needed for people to embrace AI rather than fear it?
23:01I think public acceptance of AI will largely dependent, will be dependent on trust.
23:08How much they can trust that this is good for them, how we can democratize the use of AI for
23:18public good, how we can have a fair share of the benefits flowing back to the people, flowing back to
23:25the youth.
23:27Ultimately, the social contract will have to put people, not technology, at the center of innovation.
23:35Unless the technological innovations are responsible, unless we can give confidence to our youth that we are investing in education,
23:47in skilling, in retraining for them to become users and beneficiaries of new technology.
23:56Helping workers transition to newer roles, the productivity gains that Abdullah just mentioned, actually helping people in their cost of
24:07living, helping people in a better lifestyle, better future for them.
24:11I think the intellectual curse can be mitigated if we make sure that intelligence is also available to the larger
24:23set of people at affordable prices.
24:27I'll give you a small example.
24:29I'll give you a small example.
24:30Data cost in India is barely 5% or 7% of what it costs in the developed world.
24:37Because of that, data has got socialized to everybody.
24:41We have 1 billion internet users and they're able to actually learn new things.
24:48One poor man who wanted to have sanitary pads available for his wife, found it too expensive.
24:57in the shelf of the store, actually through internet, learned that the machine to make a sanitary pad is so
25:05simple that he could make a rudimentary machine, start making sanitary pads at probably one centerpiece, and is today a
25:16role model entrepreneur or startup innovator.
25:20I'm giving you a very simple example of the past.
25:23The same is happening today in the field of AI.
25:28We are providing as government, we are trying to provide compute capability at very affordable prices so that more and
25:37more kids get into the act of using these technologies for wider good.
25:42And my sense is there will be so many activities which will be around the usage of AI.
25:52It's possible that some kids in a particular college wanted only a particular set of jobs.
25:58You may not always get the kind of job you think your undergrad degree at an Ivy League college should
26:05get you.
26:06But there are so many other different avenues.
26:09You'll find people going in for newer and newer roles.
26:13You'll find probably more Michelin chefs coming out, following their passion.
26:19Yeah.
26:20And I don't think an AI, howsoever good it may be, the best model or the best intellectually designed AI
26:32agent can do anything near what a Michelin chef can do.
26:38Or what the tourist guide at the heritage site can do in terms of explaining the nuances of a country's
26:46culture, its history, robotics or humanitoids and all will have their own limitations.
26:53Yeah.
26:54I think maybe for the Western world, where economics trumps over human issues, maybe the concerns there will be very
27:05different.
27:05But in a country like India, which is very spiritual, where people matter a lot, where family traditions matter a
27:14lot.
27:14Mm-hmm.
27:15I think there will always be a lot of scope for coexistence of technology and history.
27:24Yeah.
27:26This is a blast to you.
27:27Minister Mary, I would love to briefly hear your opinion on that.
27:31There are some economists that warn of an intelligence curse, meaning if AI creates most value, governments may stop investing
27:40in education and health because they no longer need people for economic growth.
27:45Do you think this is a real risk, especially for a country like yours, which is betting so heavily on
27:50AI right now?
27:51And to what extent do you think that investment in people is needed?
27:56What do you do to build the workforce of tomorrow?
27:58You're asking the wrong guy.
28:00We already embraced it.
28:02Why do you think that?
28:04So we are embracing AI and the technology from the cabinet level onwards.
28:10Our cabinet portal today, as a minister, when I go to cabinet, is fully AI.
28:16It actually creates the briefs for me.
28:18It helps me to understand if there are things that I need to look at.
28:23It's fully integrated in cabinets from the top, you know, level.
28:27It makes me much efficient.
28:29It makes me more focused.
28:31It makes me, you know, look at regulations and policies in different manners.
28:36And this is done by the cabinet and the cabinet secretariat.
28:39And this is where we embrace it.
28:41So as I'm saying, you're asking the wrong person here.
28:44But we are saying that embracing AI from the public sector showed highest capacity and capabilities.
28:53Let me change the question.
28:56Why does government exist?
28:59Government exists to serve people.
29:03And this has always been the foundation's vision of our leaders in the UAE that we exist as government to
29:12serve.
29:13And if AI could help us perform better, serve our people, local or residents much better, then, oh, yeah, we're
29:22going to take AI throughout the technology and implement it from all cases.
29:26I think that's the kind of mentality when you look at this aspect.
29:31And I'll go back to my first point.
29:33We saw the industrial revolutions coming in with technology.
29:36We should have went back and said, when the era of agriculture, when machinery came in, we should have said,
29:43no, don't use machinery.
29:44People will lose their jobs.
29:45Or when machinery came in and factories and factories said, you know, we don't need to go to agriculture anymore
29:53because factories taking our jobs stop industries and stop factories.
29:58That kind of mindset happened in history.
30:01And we need to look back to it and understand that the future relies on where adaptation and agility of
30:08government and understand the exact question.
30:11Because the question is how government can be more productive and how government can serve the people much better.
30:18Now, to embrace it and embrace the movement of it, that's where we need to be and that's the attitude
30:23that we need to have.
30:24Yeah.
30:25Thank you so much.
30:25Unfortunately, our time is up.
30:27Minister Goyal, Minister Le Maire, Minister Le Maire, thank you for this discussion and for not settling for the spectator's
30:33position but getting ready for the catch up and come back.
30:41Thank you so much.
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