IThere is no longer a discourse on innovation, digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI) that does not make “humans” the cornerstone of its reason for being. The “human-centered” vision makes technology a tool at its service. Including the report “AI: our ambition for France” presented to the President of the Republic on March 13 by the artificial intelligence commission, a chapter of which is titled “Humanism: let’s place AI at our service”. This is commendable, incontestable, irrefutable. But it is both a reductive vision of AI and a very precise meaning of the humanist movement.
First of all, a digital object or service is not – and has never been – a simple tool. The Internet, social networks and AI are socio-technical and political devices designed by humans. However, through calculations (intentional, mathematical, ethical, moral, financial, etc.), digital technology makes them invisible. Must therefore “open the hood” of calculations so that humans, who are the starting point of any digital device, remain the arrival point.
Then, the humanism which underlies progress through AI, as described in the commission’s report, is more akin to an existentialist humanism, focused on the individual, freedom of choice and personal responsibility, as well as a humanism such as it can be accepted in everyday language, synonymous with benevolence, altruism, and a concern for the common good, in a global, and not local, perspective. In this respect, the humanism mentioned stops at the borders of the nation, and around the individual.
Common culture
But to claim to have a concern for humans is to have a responsibility towards them. Designers of AI systems must be aware of the social, cognitive, ethical and even environmental consequences that their technical choices generate. When a building collapses, the responsibility of the architect is studied. When an algorithm promotes disinformation or amplifies multiple psychosocial risks, what about the responsibility of its architect(s)?
For this, the fundamentals of science and technology, anthropology and sociology must be taught more widely than they are in technical courses. Sharing such a common culture would also make it possible to move away from the technicist dreams and hasty amalgamations that make any wave of new uses a new revolution.
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