French president Emmanuel Macron struck an upbeat tone. The European Union was “back in the race” to become a big player in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, he declared. Macron was speaking in the Grand Palais, where he had gathered world leaders and tech executives for a two-day summit on AI. Ever since OpenAI’s generative chatbot ChatGPT was publicly launched in late 2022, governments and companies have been trying to position themselves on the right side of the rapidly advancing technology. The market has largely been dominated by US tech giants and start-ups, buoyed by huge amounts of venture capital funding,…