FRANCE PERSPECTIVE

Paris handles Anthropic's request seriously — meaning with calculated skepticism. Le Monde quotes the central line: "It would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development." And specifies: the pause would help "societal structures and alignment research keep pace with the advance of the technology." Le Monde immediately recalls Anthropic's consistency: in early 2025, co-founder Dario Amodei had already published a long essay in this vein, and the company publicly opposed the Pentagon on the use of its models for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. The paper cites "the prospect of AI capable of making itself" as the central concern. L'Express goes further on the shock figure: "the ability of AI to perform tasks autonomously doubles roughly every four months" — an exponential acceleration that makes classical regulation structurally late. But the French press also signals the precedent: in 2023, Elon Musk supported a similar Future of Life Institute initiative for a six-month moratorium — which led to nothing. Paris has a specific regulatory culture (European AI Act, GDPR) and reads Anthropic's request as an American call to mimic what Europe has already begun to build. Nuance prevails: Jack Clark and Marina Favaro are quoted precisely. The implicit conclusion is diplomatic: Paris considers itself already on the right side of the argument without needing to say so.