Macron proposes restricting minors' access to artificial intelligence: "It can't be the Wild West"

French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed restricting minors' access to artificial intelligence and even prohibiting its use "when it represents a risk to children's mental health and brains." Macron has promoted the Paris Call for AI Safety after holding a video conference with a dozen world leaders in the context of the Peace Forum being held these days in the French capital.

"AI cannot be the Wild West," Macron told the newspaper Les Echos, in light of a report prepared by a panel of experts with 18 recommendations for the regulation of artificial intelligence, including the principle of "pre-audit and pre-certification", with a prior review of the models before marketing them and making them available to minors.

"The current system is unsustainable and must be changed," added the French president. "If certain uses of AI pose a risk to children, then they should be prohibited," he ruled, three months after the Constitutional Council struck down the core of the law that prohibited social networks for children under 15 years of age, considering it "disproportionate."

Unable to be discouraged, Macron reiterated his intention to now promote "European regulation" of AI from France and urged countries like the United States and Canada to adopt "the same preventive approach." As a preview, the French president held the video conference on Tuesday with fifty heads of government, researchers, experts and companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft or Mistral before making public the "call" from Paris, with the purpose of "shaping national and European legislative debates" on AI security.

"The evaluation is shared and we must act together," said Macron, who explained in his X account the three agreed priorities: "Better evaluate, independently and publicly, the risks of the most advanced models; better share alerts in the event of a serious incident and hold responsible the actors who develop the models."

"The idea is not to reject innovations, but to create a framework that takes into account the dangers, which are triple: our children, democratic security and national security," concluded Macron, who made public the report Generative AI and its vulnerabilities, commissioned by the French Government to examine the risks of the public's use of these tools (taking into account that 70% of young people between 15 and 24 years old use them regularly in France).

The report warns about the risk of "cognitive weakening" in minors, by delegating (and not acquiring) certain mental skills that can impact "autonomy in decision-making." Experts advocate the creation of a national AI education policy to control its uses and risks, and strengthen critical thinking.

The panel of experts also recommends the creation of "a national protocol to respond to information crises generated by AI" and prevent the spread of disinformation or "information whose quality is not guaranteed" that can ultimately contribute to a "democratic weakening."

The report finally warns of the risk of "emotional dependence" generated by devices that use "atropomorphization" to present themselves to human interlocutors. The economic model of AI also facilitates the emergence of a "cognition economy" that exploits the cognitive faculties, emotions and psychological profiles of users, by integrating advertisements into the responses of conversational "agents."