Decorte CEO asked to comment by Financial Times’ Sifted on UK’s refusal to sign Paris AI leaders’ statement

Decorte Future Industries’ CEO Roeland Decorte was asked by The Financial Times' Sifted to comment on the UK government's decision not to sign the Paris AI Action Summit final leaders' pledge. Here's what Sifted ended up publishing:

“If declining to sign the Paris statement signals the current UK government’s intent to focus on regulatory substance over diplomatic form, then that is good news for the sector — and the UK,"

https://sifted.eu/articles/uk-tech-leaders-cheer-paris-declaration-snub-news

👉 For his more detailed reasoning, see below:

“As AI founders, we have seen the debate on AI regulation shift from our calls for clear regulatory guidelines within which we can innovate fairly and responsibly, to a global race for influence that sometimes has little to do with the actual machine learning being discussed.

To us on the ground, or rather behind our coding terminals, the Paris Summit leaders’ statement regarding open, sustainable and ethical AI was always going to be more emotive than substantive: ignoring, for diplomatic reasons, recent press on censorship in signatory China’s DeepSeek model, or the fact that national security concerns mean multiple signatories to the statement have actually banned, and more will ban, other signatories’ AI models.

As the UK government has pointed out, it has already signed substantive agreements at the Paris summit regarding sustainable AI and cybersecurity. While I understand the disappointment from those who saw a more conciliatory stance as the UK’s way to leading on safe AI, if declining to sign the Paris leaders' statement signals the current UK government’s intent to focus on regulatory substance over diplomatic form, then that is good news for the sector – and the UK.”