Online child protection likely to find favour at digital G7

Ministers gathering for a digital G7 meeting in Paris Friday will likely find common ground on online child protection, but host France expects division over the environmental impact of computing.

Transatlantic ties remain strained over tech policy and other issues ahead of the G7 heads of state meeting in Evian, eastern France on June 15-17, making the ministers' job of preparing the terrain all the trickier.

Paris was unable to bring the US aboard a joint declaration at last year's AI summit with 160 other countries.


France's finance ministry -- responsible for digital affairs -- nevertheless insists that this year's talks "are making good progress".

The detailed results of the talks capping months of negotiation will be unveiled at a Friday afternoon press conference.

As well as a joint statement, participants are working on shared language for annexes covering child protection, AI security and governance and diffusing AI through economies -- especially to small and medium firms.

France is optimistic about finding consensus on all three.

But a fourth work area, on the sustainability of the digital economy, is more fraught, with the French hosts seeing little chance of reaching common ground.

"The environment may be where it's going to be most complicated," France's digital minister Anne Le Henanff told AFP on Wednesday.

AI firms' growing pursuit of computing capacity is driving demand for energy to power data centres, as well as gobbling up rare raw materials for many of the high-end chips required.

The finance ministry said that even the title of the work area -- "environmental impact of digital technology" -- had proved a "red line" for the American side.

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