The AI dissident: Meredith Whittaker
As an influential AI ethics researcher at Google, Meredith Whittaker urged that the company do more about AI’s potential harms. Now, as head of the non-profit foundation behind encrypted messaging app Signal and an adviser to the AI Now Institute, she remains a powerful voice calling Big Tech to account and countering some of the AI hype.
Whittaker quit Google in 2019 after leading a series of walkouts to protest workplace misconduct. She has since warned that existing AI systems can include biased datasets that entrench racial and gender biases — an issue that requires immediate action by regulators.
She also campaigned against attempts to break encryption and warned of the market power of a handful of U.S. companies over AI. Until recently she even had a role counseling regulators as a senior adviser on AI to Lina Khan, who chaired the U.S. Federal Trade Commission from 2021 to 2025.
The AI president: Emmanuel Macron
French President Emmanuel Macron may be struggling to form a government but he hasn’t abandoned his ambition to be the brains behind France’s — and Europe’s — AI strategy.
As host of the AI Action Summit in Paris, the French president has been hard at work pushing European countries to adopt a more aggressive innovation strategy that could help draw investment. He has also stepped up talks with French and European business leaders and researchers to show off what France can do for AI.
Macron’s interest in AI is not new. Back in 2018 he launched a national AI strategy, entitled “AI for Humanity,” aimed at positioning France as a world leader and funding AI research, innovation and training.
That ambition has now shifted up a gear, especially since Washington announced the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure. Macron is pushing hard to help French companies and above all the country’s great hope, Mistral AI, which Paris is counting on to rival OpenAI.
At the same time, Macron also wants to make Paris a platform for global talks on universal access to AI, as Europe tries to find a space in a tech race dominated by the U.S. and China. Here he has tried to pull in new allies, even reaching out to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to co-chair the Paris AI Summit.