BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 27 of 150

Correct — B, Paris. The AI Action Summit was held at the Grand Palais in Paris on 10 and 11 February 2025, and it was co-chaired by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — the first time India led a summit in this series. More than 1,000 participants from over 100 countries attended, along with heads of government, the major AI laboratories, standards bodies and civil-society organisations. Its principal document was the 'Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet', signed by 58 countries. Two of the world's largest AI jurisdictions did not sign: the United States and the United Kingdom both declined, the UK saying publicly that the text did not go far enough on global AI governance and on national-security questions. That refusal is the single most examinable fact about Paris 2025, because it marks the point at which the summit series stopped producing consensus documents. The name matters as much as the venue. This is the third meeting in a deliberately evolving chain — the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom in November 2023, the AI Seoul Summit in the Republic of Korea in May 2024, and then Paris, where the organisers dropped 'safety' for 'action' to shift the agenda from existential risk towards deployment, public-interest AI, energy and jobs. India's co-chairmanship at Paris was also where India was announced as host of the next edition. Anchor all of this to the exam: on 13 September 2025, when this paper was set, Paris was the most recent summit and India's turn was still ahead.

• (a)Bengaluru — The patriotic guess, and the trap the option set is built around. India was genuinely central to Paris 2025 — Prime Minister Modi co-chaired it and India was named there as the next host — so a candidate who remembers 'India and AI in February 2025' reaches for India's software capital. But Bengaluru has never hosted an edition of this series, and when India's turn did come the venue was Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, not Bengaluru.
• (c)Rome — The most intelligent wrong answer, because Rome does own a real landmark in AI governance — just a different one. The Rome Call for AI Ethics was signed there on 28 February 2020 by the Pontifical Academy for Life, Microsoft, IBM, the FAO and Italy's Ministry of Innovation, setting out three impact areas and six principles and coining the word 'algorethics'. That is a separate initiative from the intergovernmental summit chain, and Rome has hosted no edition of it.
• (d)More than one of the above — Impossible by construction. A single named event held on 10-11 February 2025 has exactly one host city, so no two of Bengaluru, Paris and Rome can both be right. BPSC attaches this fifth option to almost every question in the paper precisely so that candidates stop reading it as a signal; it is live only where the three named choices are independent items that can each be separately true, not rival answers to a single 'which city' question.

Since 2023 the world's attempt at governing artificial intelligence has run through a chain of leaders' summits, each renamed to signal a shift in emphasis. The first was the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, England, on 1-2 November 2023, chosen for its symbolism as the wartime codebreaking site; it produced the Bletchley Declaration, in which 28 countries and the European Union — including both the United States and China — acknowledged the risks of frontier AI models. The second was the AI Seoul Summit of May 2024, co-hosted by the Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom, which extended the agenda from safety alone to innovation and inclusivity and drew voluntary safety commitments from the leading model developers. The third was the AI Action Summit in Paris in February 2025, which widened the frame again towards public-interest AI, the labour market, energy demand and getting technology to developing countries. The fourth was to be hosted by India. Read the sequence by its names — safety, then action, then impact — and you have the arc of international AI diplomacy in three words: first fear the technology, then deploy it, then justify it by what it delivers. Alongside this leaders' track sit the binding and institutional instruments the summits are not: the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act, the OECD AI Principles of 2019, UNESCO's 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of AI, and the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence.

This is a pure recall question, so the reasoning has to come from structure rather than memory. Start by eliminating (d): one event on two named dates has one host city, so 'more than one of the above' cannot survive. Then ask which of the three cities the series has ever visited. The chain is Bletchley Park, Seoul, Paris and New Delhi — no Indian edition before 2026 and no Italian edition at all, which removes Bengaluru and Rome together. The single discriminating fact, if you know only one thing, is the venue: the Grand Palais, Paris, 10-11 February 2025, co-chaired by Macron and Modi. The trap is designed to punish a real memory rather than ignorance. India's involvement in February 2025 was heavy and heavily covered in India, so 'AI summit plus February 2025 plus India' can easily collapse into an Indian city in a candidate's head. Separate the two facts: India CO-CHAIRED at Paris in 2025; India HOSTED the following edition. One more discipline this question rewards — never let a summit's host country and its chair be the same memory slot. Seoul 2024 was co-hosted by Korea and the UK; Paris 2025 was hosted by France and co-chaired with India; and the numbered G20 and BRICS summits are asked the same way, by host city and chairship.

• The AI Action Summit was held at the Grand Palais, Paris, on 10-11 February 2025, co-chaired by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with over 1,000 participants from more than 100 countries.
• Fifty-eight countries signed the summit's 'Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet'; the United States and the United Kingdom both declined, the UK citing insufficient coverage of global governance and national security.
• The series in order: AI Safety Summit, Bletchley Park, UK, 1-2 November 2023 (Bletchley Declaration, 28 countries plus the EU); AI Seoul Summit, Republic of Korea, May 2024; AI Action Summit, Paris, February 2025; India AI Impact Summit, New Delhi.
• Changed since the 13 September 2025 exam: India has now hosted its edition — the India AI Impact Summit ran at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, from 16 to 21 February 2026, organised around three 'Sutras' of People, Planet and Progress.
• Rome's place in AI governance is separate and earlier: the Rome Call for AI Ethics, signed 28 February 2020 by the Pontifical Academy for Life, Microsoft, IBM, the FAO and Italy's Ministry of Innovation, with three impact areas and six principles.

• Sliding from 'India co-chaired it' to 'India hosted it' — India co-chaired at Paris in February 2025 and hosted the following edition at New Delhi in February 2026
• Writing that the Paris statement was universally adopted; 58 countries signed, and the United States and the United Kingdom did not
• Treating a current-affairs question as if it were being asked today — this paper was set on 13 September 2025, so 'the AI Action Summit' means the Paris meeting of that February and nothing later

BPSC asks the venue as a flat one-liner with its fifth option attached — name the city, one mark, and no second statement to weigh. UPSC took exactly the same event in its 2025 Prelims and made it a two-statement judgement instead, asking whether Paris built on Bletchley Park and Seoul (true) and whether the US and UK signed the declaration (false). Same fact base, two different skills: BPSC rewards a memorised venue list, UPSC rewards knowing what the summit actually produced.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Bletchley Declaration, the first multilateral statement on the risks of frontier artificial intelligence, was adopted at a summit held in

  • (a)Seoul, Republic of Korea
  • (b)Bletchley Park, United Kingdom
  • (c)Paris, France
  • (d)New Delhi, India

  Answer(b) Bletchley Park, United Kingdom — the AI Safety Summit of 1-2 November 2023 produced the Bletchley Declaration, signed by 28 countries and the European Union. Seoul hosted the second summit in May 2024, Paris the AI Action Summit in February 2025 and New Delhi the AI Impact Summit.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which two major countries declined to sign the 'Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet' at the Paris AI Action Summit, 2025?

  • (a)China and Russia
  • (b)The United States and the United Kingdom
  • (c)India and Japan
  • (d)Germany and Canada

  Answer(b) The United States and the United Kingdom — 58 countries signed the Paris statement; the US and the UK both withheld their signatures, the UK saying the text did not go far enough on global AI governance and national security.