Facebook, Google are getting too big to be governed, warns French President

“At a point of time, your government, your people, may say: ‘Wake up. They are too big,’ ” Macron told Wired, an American monthly. “Not just too big to fail, but too big to be governed.”

The president said the fact that these two companies were getting too big was a wake-up sign to the US government, which may have to consider dismantling the firms, as happened with the oil majors in the early part of the 20th century.

He was also concerned about new issues that are cropping up in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), which could open a Pandora’s Box as far as privacy is concerned. “AI will raise a lot of issues in ethics, in politics, it will question our democracy and our collective preferences,” said the French President.

For instance, medical care can be totally transformed, making it much more predictive and personalised if one gets access to a lot of data. “We will open our data in France,” said the president. “But the day you start dealing with privacy issues, the day you open this data and unveil personal information, you open a Pandora's Box, with potential use cases that will not be increasing the common good and improving the way to treat you.”

Referring to the perceived hostility to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in Europe, Macron said France would welcome investments from them, especially those with AI research centres in the country.

Last week, he had announced a €1.5-billion plan to transform France into a world leader for AI research and innovation. Addressing the ‘AI for Humanity’ conference in Paris, he had said turning France into an AI leader would allow the country to use it for public good and ensure that a Promethean promise doesn’t become a dystopia.