France, May 3 -- France ranks fifth globally in terms of its number of supercomputers - high-performance machines that can make millions, even billions, of calculations per second, and which are key to developing artificial intelligence. One of its most powerful, Jean-Zay, is dedicated to academic research.
It seems an unlikely location from which artificial intelligence will take over the world: a white-walled room about the size of a tennis court at the Paris-Saclay university in Orsay, south of Paris.
Half a dozen rows of server racks the height of refrigerators, each holding 26 motherboards, are connected by strands of turquoise cable.
This is the home of the Jean-Zay supercomputer.
Powerful calculations are happening here, all day,...