Macron aims to drag France into the age of artificial intelligence

France's Emmanuel Macron knows his country is not about to develop a local equivalent of Google or Facebook to power the development of artificial intelligence. But in a national AI strategy to be unveiled this week, the French president will argue that France has other assets to fuel innovation: its foreign brain trust, huge troves of state-owned data and links to European research institutes to share and leverage knowledge, according to French officials. Macron's aim is nothing less than to drag his country into the age of AI and erase 30 years of underperformance on innovation. "We missed all the big technological revolutions of recent years, but France has a card to play in the field of artificial intelligence," said an aide to the president who asked not to be named. "Either we seize the chance now, or we watch another wave pass us by."