France can become a country “at the forefront” of artificial intelligence, but this will have a cost, indicates the report of the commission on artificial intelligence mandated in September 2023 by the government.
The first part of the report provides educational work by defining the term “Artificial Intelligence”. And the authors attempt to outline answers to the impact of AI on the job market, on artistic creation, on environmental questions, and geopolitical questions.
On the subject of employment, the authors believe that “we must prepare for the automation enabled by AI to eliminate certain jobs and accelerate the obsolescence of certain skills”; but they point out that the development of these technologies also allows the creation of new professions that are “partly unknown” today.
Become a leading player
The second part makes proposals to enable France to become a major player in AI in the next five years, with 25 proposals which revolve around six main axes, ranging from awareness and training to AI technologies. AI to support investment and innovation.
The report above all notes a delay in Europe and France in the field of artificial intelligence technologies, and therefore proposes tripling France’s investments in this area.
This is not the first time that a report details a series of measures aimed at promoting the development of artificial intelligence technologies. In 2018, a first report entrusted to Cédric Villani also proposed several avenues aimed at promoting the growth of these technologies. But at the time he refrained from giving an estimate of the financial impact of these measures.
In total, the various measures of the plan proposed today represent an investment of 27 billion euros over the next five years.
Ambitious but expensive
The most expensive measures aim to accelerate the emergence of a European sector of semiconductor components adapted to AI systems, the cost of which is estimated at 7.7 billion euros over 5 years.
If overshadowing the Taiwanese company TSMC is complicated, the authors believe that “this monopolistic positioning is not inevitable”. Above all, they recall that the development of AI “represents an opportunity for Europe to position itself on the next generations of semiconductors.”
The effort to strengthen the adoption of digital technology and artificial intelligence in public services is estimated at 5.5 billion euros, investment in digital companies and the digital transformation of French companies 3, 6 billion euros.
AI All stars
Proposals which will be difficult to accept, while the government announced at the end of February a plan to reduce public spending by 10 billion euros to cope with the drop in growth forecasts in 2024. proposed plan is in any case significantly more ambitious than that announced in 2018 following the Villani report, which provided for a total of 1.5 billion euros to support the sector.
The authors of the report bring together experts from different sectors, working under the presidency of Philippe Aghion, economist and professor at the Collège de France, and Anne Bouverot, president of the board of directors of the École normale supérieure. Among the 13 experts appointed to participate in the writing of the report, we can cite some names already well known in the sector such as Gilles Babinet, entrepreneur former director of CNNum, Luc Julia, engineer who participated in the design of Siri, or even Yann LeCun , researcher specializing in deep learning technologies. Representatives of companies such as Meta, Google and the French company Mistral are among the experts appointed.
The college also called on Franca Salis-Madinier, CFDT union member at Orange and member of the European Economic and Social Committee, the lawyer Alexandra Bensamoun and the former secretary of state for digital Cédric O. The authors explain having carried out more than 600 hearings of experts and players in the world of AI and are also based on the results of a consultation with citizens carried out using the Agora application at the end of 2023.