Pharrell Williams at AI Summit as Middle East AI Booms
On the 10 and 11th of February, France organized its first Paris AI Summit, the AI Action Summit at the Grand Palais Museum, bringing together world leaders, leading tech CEOs, and even music celebrities such as Pharrell Williams to discuss the future of AI.
UN Secretary General António Guterres, also speaking at the Paris AI Safety Summit, warned that growing concentration of AI capabilities will widen geopolitical fault lines.
“We must prevent a world of AI ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots,’” Guterres emphasized, calling for urgent global collaboration for “global guardrails” so that AI benefits everyone.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron echoed Guterres’ response, “We need these rules for AI to move forward.”
But President Macron’s remarks appeared to have triggered US Vice President JD Vance, who indirectly warned the European Union’s (EU) leaders against overregulation, arguing that “excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry as it’s taking off.”
Energy Dilemma
One of the urgent issues at the AI action summit Paris 2025 was AI’s escalating energy use, which is already putting an “unsustainable strain” on worldwide resources.
Guterres requested firms at the Paris AI action summit to reinvent AI infrastructure, saying that “it is important to design AI algorithms and infrastructures that require less energy and integrate AI into smart grids to optimize power usage.”
The request at the Paris AI Summit was for green AI operations to form part of broader issues with the environmental implications of AI and ensuring that innovation keeps pace with the need to act in a sustainable manner.
“There is no AI without energy,” Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), highlighted the problem by warning that thousands of hungry for power data centers would be erected over the next few years, compelling governments to find clean and affordable sources of electricity.
AI Heavyweight Fears
Despite controversy and ethical concerns that were highlighted in the Paris AI summit 2025, business leaders touted AI’s possibilities for transforming business and creativity.
“What people need nowadays is not websites, but information that is more relevant to what they want,” said Choi Soo-yeon, CEO of South Korean AI leader Naver, highlighting AI’s potential to tailor shopping experiences and make recommendations specific to individuals’ personal tastes.
Pharrell Williams battled fears of AI taking over human creativity. “There’s just too much fear around it,” he said. “We wouldn’t use AI to help us write a song… it would not replace creativity.” His sentiments were mirrored in a wider discussion on the application of AI in human centered industries that were spoken about in the AI summit Paris 2025.
As AI evolves, world leaders are tasked with ensuring that they foster innovation while leading responsibly, sustainably, and inclusively. The Paris AI Summit highlighted the timeliness of these conversations as a precursor to upcoming compacts that will determine the future of artificial intelligence globally.
Middle East Racing Forward in AI
Convening that the Parisian Grand Palais, political and tech leaders on the screen objective at the AI Safety Summit Paris, was to promote ethical and accessible AI, but the real undertone of the AI summit was really boosting the remaining of European dominance in the intelligent tech sector.
But Europe, China, India, and the US are not the only big players in the AI playfield. Middle East’s powerhouses, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are also becoming fort runner of AI adoption.
A Deloitte report, ‘2025 State of AI in the Middle East Report’, in association with Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), revealed that more than 65% of regional organizations are preparing to invest in AI more over the coming year.
“The GCC region is making substantial investments in AI, driven by strong government commitments. With increasing funding for AI infrastructure and a growing emphasis on developing local talent, the region is positioning itself as a global leader in AI innovation,” said Deloitte Middle East CEO Mutasem Dajani.
“This transformation is accelerating the shift toward knowledge-based economies, compelling organizations to fundamentally rethink their operations,” Dajani added, pointing to the region’s aspiration.
But Middle Eastern AI investment plans are not enough, as the reported also highlighted that almost half of organizations cite a lack of talent and technology infrastructure to ratio AI effectively as a primary concern.
MBZUAI Professor Sami Haddadin described a “critical disconnect” between AI enthusiasm and barriers, such as skills shortages and regulatory uncertainty that are slowing the adoption.
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