Macron announces €100 billion investment in AI with deepfake video blitz
www.france24.com
France will see €109 billion ($113 billion) invested in AI projects, President Emmanuel Macron announced Sunday, calling it a game-changer ahead of a global AI summit in Paris. To promote the event,…

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Meanwhile, the French financing will include commitments from the United Arab Emirates, American and Canadian investments funds and French companies like telecommunications firms Iliad and Orange, and aerospace and defense group Thales

A few days before France’s AI Action Summit, which kicked off on Monday, the UAE said it would invest between 30 billion euros and 50 billion euros in the construction of a one-gigawatt AI data center in France as part of a campus focused on the technology’s development.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/10/frances-answer-to-stargate-macron-announces-ai-investment.html

  • Canigou@jlai.luEnglish
    1·
    10 hours ago

    In France, where I live, good unemployement (keeping arround 80% of your previous revenues during a year or two) and health benefits (100% coverage if you have a, relatively cheap, additional individual insurance). Which has the added benefit of keeping medecine prices pretty low (ie insulin is free for diabetics here and doesn’t cost much if you pay for it yourself).

    It should, and could, be even better if they trusted beneficiaries a bit more, and were not constantly harrasing them into accepting shity jobs.

    When you earn unemployement benefits, you still pay taxes and the rest of the money you spend keeps the national economy running (which, in turn, also turn in taxes) so financing it isn’t necessarely an issue and hasn’t been for decades (even without taxing the 10% wealthiest who manage to mostly avoid it and thus, don’t contribute. While their wealth doubled in the last 20 years, taking inflation into account).

    The constant political fight arround those spendings is mostly about the morality of “assisting” unemployed and poor families not an economical balance matter.

    • iiiEnglish
      2·
      10 hours ago

      That I know, I live in Belgium.

      I wonder what successful capitalisation of that would look like?

      • Canigou@jlai.luEnglish
        1·
        10 hours ago

        One way would be to higher EU members’ financial contribution to it’s budget in proportion to their lack of wellfairness. I also frequently dream of tariffs on extra-EU imports on the same criteria, thus also preventing so called “social dumping”, modern slavery and exploitation. Which in turn would make our own production more competitive and enable better salaries overall.

        Of course, a lot of goods would get more expensive, but we would finaly pay a fair price (rewarding those who until now payed with their health/liberty/life for those low prices). Unfortunately, I think it will keep beeing a dream for quite a while (if not ever)…

        • iiiEnglish
          1·
          9 hours ago

          make our own production more competitive and enable better salaries overall.

          That’s the topic of this post: due to it’s central steering EU became technologically (and in a few decades economically) irrelevant. It doesn’t know how to make 21st century things. Tarrifs don’t help with that problem, au contraire. Nor does a national social security system. The latter does make sure that everyone’s quality of life degrades about equally fast.