The two-day AI Action Summit concluded in Paris on Thursday with political leaders of roughly 70 countries signing a declaration to make AI “open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure, and trustworthy.” There were two interesting points about this. One, China signed the declaration. Two, the US and UK sat out of it.

The US was completely against any AI regulation. “Excessive regulation in the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it is taking off,” said visiting US Vice President JD Vance.

Amid these varying, incoherent positions, here are a few key takeaways from the Summit.

#1 AI arms race

There is an AI arms race unfolding globally, and corporations and countries are securing not tens but hundreds of billions of dollars of investments. These investments are going into putting together key layers of the tech: frontier AI models, power hungry semiconductor chips, data centres and applications built on top of that. Ten years ago it was almost unimaginable that the large industrial buildings hosting computer servers and cutting edge semiconductor chips would become central to a country’s security and sovereignty.

The US possesses all components of a full AI stack, including advanced semiconductor design, frontier algorithms and transformational applications, as Vice President JD Vance announced, while reminding the European and other friendly countries of America’s hegemony in the AI ecosystem.