AI Grid hosted a tour of the highly innovative AI ecosystem of Paris, the “French Silicon Valley”.
Day 1: A deep dive into the startup and technology landscape
The tour in Paris began with a first day in the heart of French technological innovation. The participants met with representatives of La French Tech Paris-Saclay, organized at Playground, one of the largest deeptech start-up incubators in France. This region, known as the “French Silicon Valley”, is home to over 800 start-ups, 50 research laboratories and is one of the eight most powerful innovation clusters in the world.
Another highlight was the discussion with SATT Paris-Saclay, the accelerator for technology transfer, which supports doctoral students on their entrepreneurial path. This demonstrates the region's commitment to promoting technology transfer into the economy.
The day ended with a visit to Inria, where the research team presented methods for privacy and fairness in machine learning and polarization in social networks. A big thank you goes to Nadia Benallal, Johan Nicolás Diaz, Maxence Jamet, Denis Kuzzay, Catuscia Palamidessi and Frank Valencia for their hospitality and sharing their incredible expertise.
Day 2: Philosophical and scientific perspectives
The second day began with a stimulating discussion about tea at the Café de la Grande Mosquée in Paris with Thomas Souverain, a doctoral student in philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure. Thomas presented his in-depth research on “AI Explainability and Ethics,” which illuminated the intersections of philosophy and explainable AI and raised critical questions about the explainability of AI.
The participants then visited the Sorbonne Université, where they met Gérard Biau, professor and head of the SCAI (Sorbonne Center for Artificial Intelligence), and Catherine Pelachaud, research director at CNRS and ISIR. Catherine Pelachaud fascinated with her team's new work on virtual assistants and the recognition and generation of facial expressions.
The afternoon was enriched by a presentation by Patrick Perez, CEO of Kyutai, a non-profit research center for open sciences. Kyutai brings together top researchers to work on large language models, with a focus on independent research and promoting education.
The day ended at AXA Group, where Marcin Detyniecki, Head of R&D, and his colleague Xavier Renard gave a comprehensive overview of AXA's long-term AI strategy, based on the three pillars of transformation, unlocking value from unstructured data and growth through AI. Innovation based.
Franco-German collaboration is an important pillar of AI research
As part of the AI Grid Science & Innovation Tour in Paris, Professor Wolfgang Wahlster, CEO of AI Grid and senior researcher at the French Research Center for Artificial Intelligence CEA, spoke about France's significant historical and current contributions to artificial intelligence. Prof. Wahlster highlighted the strong connection between French expertise in theoretical mathematics and its influence on key areas of AI such as automated theorem proving and program synthesis. He pointed to the interactive theorem proof system “Coq,” developed by INRIA since 1989, as a key example of France’s profound contributions. He also recalled the first European AI conference, which took place in Orsay in 1982 and which not only strengthened Franco-German cooperation but was also of great importance for the entire European AI community.
