In a few months, a milestone seems to have been reached with ChatGPT. Innovation goes beyond the technological framework alone. Its multisectoral impacts feed the interdisciplinary debate. As often, teachers are on the front line, but also lawyers, practitioners and academics, who must rethink fundamental categories such as liability or intellectual property. In addition to its many practical implications, artificial intelligence and, more broadly, technologies resulting from the “digital revolution”, come to question what is the basis of our very humanity.
On this point, the 16th century, generally less acclaimed by the general public, nevertheless has a lot to tell us – we will only provide some lines of thought here. Renaissance or “decadence” – according to the well-known formula of Henri Matisse -, the first modern century bequeathed to us a tradition based on free will. Anthropocentrism was born in the twists and turns of a period of intense transition, with a unique faith in the creative and almost exclusive genius of man. It is Humanism that the debates on Transhumanism question today. With ChatGPT, in the age of algorithms and deep learningone can wonder about what remains of free will and man’s monopoly over the creative process.
More fundamentally, new technologies are deeply anxiety-provoking in terms of their disruptive effect. The labor market is not the only one upset: it is the very cardinal notion ofhomo faberor the meaning of man and his dignity, which seems threatened. In 1930, Keynes prophesied a time when technology would reduce the weekly working time to 15 hours. The prediction now seems outdated. In a note to the alarmist figures of February 2023, Goldman Sachs analysts envisage the automation of 46% of administrative tasks and 45% of legal missions. In other words, the NTIC could well, in the long term, deprive the man of his work. Another way of speaking of man’s enslavement to his creation.
An easy paradox and a bit ironic would be to limit oneself to the observation that, if man becomes a slave to machines, then the circle is complete with the 16th century, which, precisely, saw the dark “Renaissance” of slavery. But we prefer to emphasize what seems to us to be the ultimate criterion of analogy between the 16th century and our time, namely the existence of a disruptive innovation shaking up the data market. From the printing press to the Internet, there are few innovations which, in the human odyssey, have generated such a quantitative and qualitative leap in the circulation of knowledge. Comparing the 16th and 21st centuries alone forms a focus for epistemological questions. The “Gutenberg Galaxy” gave birth to the “typographic man”, and one could also wonder under what name Marshall MacLuhan would baptize our time if he were still alive – we know that his work stopped at l era of radio, referred to as the “Marconi Galaxy”. “Le Cun”, “Bengio” or “Hinton” galaxy, i.e. the founding fathers of the deep learning ?
The printing press was a double-edged sword
Let’s continue the analysis: the humanist dream may have seemed, for a time, to come true in the libertarian daydreams of Silicon Valley. IBM, Hewlett Packard, Apple… a global somnambulistic journey, which ends today with a brutal awakening. We are alarmed today by rules taken in an emergency and commissions. Similarly, beyond the undeniable progress in terms of the circulation of knowledge that it has generated, and which are structurally the same, on a larger scale, than those of digital technology, the printing press has had dramatic consequences that should be not to forget. In 1957, Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin sketched a correlation between the invention and the circulation of reformed theses: Gutenberg, unwittingly, had created the very breeding ground for the discord to come. But it was Elisabeth L. Eisenstein who, in 1983, emphasized the idea of schism as a negative externality of Gutenberg’s press. In his work The Printing Press as an agent of change, the author made the link between the printing press and the total explosion of Christianity into a multitude of different cultures and ways of life, with a religious otherness which was to end, as we know, in a bloodbath. Under his pen, printing was a real revolution, a double-edged sword, and the analogy is striking with digital.
In a remarkable work looking back on the attacks of 2015, historians Denis Crouzet and Jean‑Marie Le Gall put on the clothes of whistleblowers on the danger that awaits the contemporary era, recalling what was, in their raw reality , the violence of the Wars of Religion. Taking a step back invites us to extend the reflection from the religious sphere to the human relationship in the broadest sense. The absence of thoughtful action on the supervision of new technologies leaves us at risk of a war of all against all. Beyond fake news taken up by the Bronner Commission, a decompartmentalized, resolutely multidisciplinary reflection, associating among other lawyers and psychologists, should look into the gloomy prospects presented by the algorithmic confinement of a platform like YouTube and, more recently, TikTok.
There is still time: we are in the awareness phase, not yet (although) bankruptcy management. Not to take the lead is to take the risk of seeing the very foundation of liberal modernity called into question. Let us recall, in fact, with Pierre Manent, that our political modernity was forged on a spirit of compromise in the aftermath of the Wars of Religion – giving rise to what Jean‑Claude Michéa calls theEmpire of the Lesser Evil.
The stakes are high and, as such, it is perhaps worth recalling that the crises of the 16th century truly gave birth to the State as the arbiter of conflicts. Keeping in mind the essential nature of the third-party function means retaining Georges Canguilhem’s idea that there is no society – let alone a platform – that can self-regulate. And if Elon Musk was able to ask for a moratorium, there is no doubt that this time should be used to work on two major concepts: the regulation, which makes society; there limit, which is the basis of humanity. And one of the projects, oh so considerable and difficult, which will have to occupy us is that of the conciliation of the man folded up behind his screen and the maintenance of the social bond. Because if “man is a wolf to man“, remember that Plautus’ formula ends with “as long as we don’t know him“.
* Charles Baud, legal historian, researcher attached to the Institute of Legal History – Jean Gaudemet (UMR 7184)