You obviously know Montalembert’s famous maxim: “Even though you don’t care about politics, politics still cares about you.” In other words, your disinterest in public affairs or your tendency to denial have no chance of helping you escape the consequences of decisions taken by the authorities. Worse, this renunciation, whatever the motivations, worsens your situation. You then lose the ability to influence the choices that will be imposed on you, and even more so the ability to anticipate them.
Indisputable, Montalembert’s sentence now largely leaves the political field and applies forcefully to other subjects, starting with artificial intelligence (AI). Ironically, this time, in addition to the individuals who pretend to be unaware that the strong winds which are already slapping their cheeks are harbingers of a tornado with incalculable consequences, the politicians – those who are therefore supposed to take care of “you all the time”. even” – they also seem to adopt the disgraceful ostrich posture towards AI, showing themselves incapable of detecting the issues and adapting society to them, after having already failed to predict them. Particularly if we think of the total questioning of the education system that it should imply and which is not even really considered yet.
Logic. While wishing to write on this subject, frightened by the tsunami it represents, many colleagues have alerted me to the culpable indifference of their readers regarding it, leading them to give up covering it under penalty of lower sales. And yet, many have already either sounded the alarm or glorified the revolution that is coming, alerting everyone to the speed at which AI is reshaping our world, threatening to quickly make it obsolete. social, professional, industrial, commercial and political structures. But others, when you talk to them about it, even though their profession is already affected, tell you, as I heard recently from a graphic designer: “AI, I don’t care about it. don’t believe it!” A bit as if someone were to claim electricity today: “I don’t believe it!” However, whatever the ostrich’s beliefs, it will no less be electrocuted if it puts its paw in a socket…
Artists on the front
Are you not interested in AI, dear reader? Too bad, because she’s interested in you. And not just a little! And when you are caught in the trap, when your eyes finally open to the abyss that is promised to you, you scream and look for those responsible and scapegoats. Take our artist friends, musicians, filmmakers and others. After having considered ChatGPT, Midjourney, Runway, Dall-E, or Suno as nice gadgets, sometimes conversational, sometimes generators of images or music, judged incapable of rising to the height of their human creativity, here they are who wake up stunned and groggy in the face of the croupiers that these tools have carved out of their professions, already showing so many the path to unemployment, while opening to some, the most adaptable, endless new perspectives.
So, on Tuesday October 22, 11,500 of them, among the most famous, ranging from Radiohead to Julianne Moore via Kevin Bacon petitioned… against AI. As if one could petition against the wind and expect an effect. In question, in addition to the abilities of AI to generate shots in which no real actor appears, to compose increasingly impressive music in a few seconds, or to replace screenwriters (but also journalists like me), the way in which the immense database which powers its algorithms escapes copyright, and turns out to be “dehumanizing” is incriminated[e]”, which is also perfectly correct. Art being supposed to express the quintessence of the human over any other form of life, the prospect that it comes to gradually escape our hand, apart from the prompts stimulating its creativity , poses a major anthropological question in addition to finally questioning our usefulness, if not our existence. And it is not a petition that can change things, especially since, as often, it arrives too late. Even if the critical point specific to the law of authorship from which those who feed the algorithms are exempt can, for a time, before the AI feeds itself without claims, be treated.
Worry fuels a form of rejection
Artificial intelligence is already having a major impact on sectors as varied as health, education, industry, media, and many others. Every month, related technological advances push the boundaries of possibility and imagination, from the creation of automated content to decision-making based on complex algorithms. Some professions disappear, others are transformed. Unfortunately, those who emerge require increasingly specialized technical skills, in a world – and particularly in a West – which is sliding imperceptibly down the slope of “idiocracy”, to use the title of Mike Judge’s film released in 2007. This gap in skills and intelligence promises an unprecedented widening of inequalities and the digital divide and an accelerated demonstration of the reality of Darwinism. Many people feel this intuitively and understand that they will no longer have their place in this new world. And this gap, like this concern, creates a form of rejection which transforms into an alleged disinterest in the specificities and impact of AI.
This is also corroborated by a study published last February by the consulting firm KPMG which indicates that 62% of French people do not really understand AI, its very concept, “nor when and how it is used”. 60% of them “commonly use AI-based applications, but just over half (52%) know [qu’elle entre en jeu] in these applications.” A reality also illuminated by the Ifop Barometer, RM Conseil, Talan, on the perception and use of generative AI by the French. If the conscious use of artificial intelligence is progressing slightly, only 25% of our compatriots say they use it, mainly through ChatGPT and its free version, knowing that the paid version, more efficient, has barely exceeded one million users worldwide, mainly businesses. scary in the latest barometer of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council published on October 23, devoted to the state of France, the priorities of its citizens and their relationship to democracy When asked the question: “Among the following subjects,. what are the three that concern you the most today for you personally?”, health and purchasing power come first, with 40% and 34% of responses, while “technological developments and their impacts”, hang around in last position, collecting only 7% interest, testifying to the ignorance of our fellow citizens regarding a theme which is nevertheless most likely to quickly disrupt their daily lives…
AI often advances hidden
But many other reasons contribute to this ambient blindness, even though, as with climate change, all energies should be subject to our adaptation to AI. The first is characteristic of almost all important discoveries. In their time, domesticated electricity, the airplane, industrial automation, nuclear power and even the Internet – let’s not forget this famous Thery Report of 1994 which denied it any future contrary to what he envisaged for Minitel – have all aroused doubts, concerns and mockery, when they were not accused of serving some devil. Even if it means being afraid of the future, we might as well disqualify it… The printing press itself was attacked, for the idea attributed to it of emptying our brains, without considering that it could precisely free up space for reflection. The second lies in the abstract aspect of the very concept of artificial intelligence. Unlike past innovations like the automobile, the telephone or the computer as an object, which can be perceived in tangible ways, AI often operates “behind the scenes” of the services and products we use. It then becomes difficult for people to realize that AI systems are responsible for personalizing their social media feeds, recommending videos, driving their cars, monitoring businesses, medical processes. concerning them, electoral communication and asymmetric wars. Added to this abstraction is a phenomenon of technological saturation likely to tire a public who feels overwhelmed. For many, AI is just another addition to a long list of tech buzzwords, after blockchain, the Internet of Things, etc.
Then, the perceived temporal distance, although false, clouds judgment. As AI often advances in disguise, many imagine that the real technological upheavals it involves will be perceived on a scale of decades, with the exception of those who are already paying the consequences, as we have seen with artists. This phenomenon, although already present in many layers of our daily lives, is therefore considered a “futuristic” subject, without immediate impact. Finally comes the way in which, in the major media or on the networks, AI has been presented in its most playful light, in particular through its video uses to create pastiches, or vocal assistance (the latter not falling within really AI in the beginning). Not to mention the antics with anesthetic effects of some of its proponents, like Elon Musk, who, behind it, nevertheless participates in advancing its most crucial aspects. This leads to a minimization of its disruptive potential. Incidentally, it’s a shame that Emmanuel Macron, who made this term familiar, did not know how to use it wisely, having in no way prepared our country. In short, all these reasons contribute to generating a certain lack of interest among the masses with regard to what will perhaps be, with robotics, itself powered by AI, the greatest revolution known to human beings, in more of his strongest questioning.
So, fellow reader who does not “believe in AI” or is not “interested in it”, remember that it is advancing at a pace that we can no longer ignore. It is no longer a question of believing or not believing, but of preparing to adapt. Nothing else.
*Benjamin Sire is an editorialist and journalist at the weekly Franc-Stireur.
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