Political and tech industry leaders descended on Paris on Monday for a two-day summit on artificial intelligence, hoping to find common ground on the revolutionary technology set to remake business and society across the world.

Co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the summit aims to lay the groundwork for governing the nascent sector, as global powers race to play leading roles in the fast-developing technology.

Monday's meeting of around 1,500 guests in the French capital's opulent Grand Palais will feature lectures and panel discussions outlining the promises of and challenges posed by AI.

Political leaders, including US Vice President JD Vance and Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, are set to rub shoulders with the likes of OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Google chief Sundar Pichai.

A largely suit-wearing crowd of men and women speaking languages from all over the world gathered under the glass-and-steel dome of the great hall, built for the 1900 Universal Exhibition.

Selected companies, academics and non-profit groups were showing off their work with AI at stands around the cavernous space decked out with screens and geodesic domes.

Two years on from the emergence of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot, able to respond to all kinds of natural-language prompts, "artificial intelligence fuels both immense hopes and, at times, exaggerated fear," Macron's AI envoy Anne Bouverot told guests as she opened the summit.

She promised a "turning point" that would bring more countries on board with AI development that until now has been restricted to a few advanced economies.

Also on the agenda is "sustainable development" of the resource- and energy-hungry technology.

"We know that AI can help mitigate climate change, but we also know that its current trajectory is unsustainable," Bouverot said. (AFP)