At a French Alpine town known for its bottled water rather than high-stakes diplomacy, the leaders of the seven largest and wealthiest democracies will discuss how to solve pressing issues like Ukraine and the Middle East through Wednesday.
“The other six are quite annoyed and upset by the fact that the U.S. has actually tried to implement this differential treatment in terms of access to Claude Fable 5 for non-U.S. users,” Renda told Fortune, saying it’s “inaugurating an era” of weaponizing U.S AI against traditional allies.
But this was also Macron’s effort to leverage the U.S.-China rivalry as Europe finds itself squeezed between the threat of export controls on AI from one side and critical minerals on the other.
“The focus of the imbalances has been the China question, the industrial overcapacity question, and trade deficits,” Chhangani told Fortune. “China is the elephant in the room. The U.S. has been talking about this issue for so many years and Europe is a little bit new to it.”
“If they suddenly lacked critical minerals from China or suddenly had their supply chains for the environmental transition interrupted, that would be pretty catastrophic, and I think similarly on AI models,” Pearl said. “I think they feel like they need to solve both of them.”
