Reflection on artificial intelligence will no longer go out. AI was the theme of one day organized in February by the network of independent audit firms, accounting and Walter France consulting, very sensitized on this subject, On the occasion of his 50th anniversary. His guests, two media personalities, Laurent Alexandre and Luc Ferry, have confronted fairly complementary points of view on the changes that expect.
Walter France : Laurent Alexandre, you are, among others, neurobiologiste, auteur, Doctissimo speaker and co -founder. Where are we today the capacities of artificial intelligence ?
Laurent Alexandre : We have all entered the universe of science -Fiction. AI's abilities are tense exponentially. A few years ago, Experts predicted that it would go beyond humans in 2100, Then they quickly brought this deadline to 2050, Then at 2030. Today, Openia wins two Qi points per month. According to Elon Musk, From this year 2025, No human will be smarter than AI, "Including him" ! Sam Altman, founder of Openia, an Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla, predict that in eighteen months the AI will be completely independent without being coached by a human and will be able to manage a hospital alone, an SME, an administrative organization, etc.
WF : Luc Ferry, You are a doctor in political science, Former Minister of National Education, philosophy, that these AI performances inspire you ?
Luc Ferry : They are breathtaking. Chatgpt has passed the physics tests of the Polytechnic School in six seconds. A 500 -page doctoral thesis, who took eight years to write, can be completed in two to eight days by "collaborating" with the AI. Who will now pay a translator while free software has perfectly translated fifty pages from one of my works in German in a few seconds ? I wanted to test his abilities on subjects not "concrete", But philosophical or ethical, By asking IA questions of common sense in natural language. The results are amazing. AI has become multimodal. I asked him to imagine Stephen King's next book, And "that" released me six great pages. Here we have a fantastic and frightening beast !
WF : To nourish AI, The race for investments is launched ?
Laurent Alexandre : Investments are colossal. Google, Facebook and other digital players invest dozens of billions of euros in research on AI, To win the leadership race in this area. Mark Zuckerberg, Over the year 2024, spent more money to provide fleas than the cost of the Manhattan program of the American atomic bomb between 1942 and 1946. Google plans to build several nuclear power plants to have sufficient energy. In 2025, There are high probabilities that we are witnessing the emergence of companies which will be valued 1 billion euros without any employee.
Luc Ferry : It is an investment race in all areas. General Burkhard, Chief of the French Army Staff, gave the alert by predicting that if the state did not invest 40 billion euros in AI, Americans will be able to nail the French army to the ground in ten minutes. In the same spirit of global competitiveness, The Draghi report announces that if Europe does not invest 1,000 billion euros in the fields of this third industrial revolution that is AI, It is European civilization that risks disappearing, With all the heritage of the Enlightenment. The stakes are colossal.
WF : How to integrate this new deal in our society ?
Laurent Alexandre : I think we are going to go through a period, Excuse me from the term, of "big mess". Indeed, Today we have political and social engineering to manage the impact of AI. Civil society, The business world, institutions : no one is ready. On another level, AI revitalizes transhumanist fantasies. Laboratories experiment with the sequencing of babies in test tubes, And a recent investigation has shown that some Americans are ready to have their baby's DNA changed. Today, The Elon Musk Neuralink Society develops fleas that can be directly established in the brain to increase memory or serve as an interface with AI.
WF : What an impact on the Deep Fakes ? How to master AI ?
Luc Ferry : Everyone today has undergone at least one cyber attack. AI is very dangerous when it is in the hands of crooks. Indeed, scams are increasingly undetectable, AI is now capable, For example, to modify the message live in a video with the speaker's voice. And if the robots take human form, How to detect, eventually, If you have the real person or their digital twin in front of you ? It may happen earlier than expected ... but even more serious are the Deep Fakes. We can make us believe everything and anything. For this reason, The development of critical mind is for me a societal issue, To prevent AI from being "a moron factory". If I was - again ! - Minister of National Education, I would grant priority to completely rethink the design of civic education courses. It is vital to teach younger generations to discernment, to check the sources, to cross them. It's a whole state of mind, skills, reflexes that must be instilled in them. We must invent new ways to make them practice very young AI so that they acquire the decline and mastery necessary to maintain their independence of mind and, SO, their freedom.
WF : How to organize the complementarity between humans and AI ? How can companies integrate this new deal ?
Laurent Alexandre : It is clear that we will have to reform our way of working. Take an example. In the medical field, Experience revealed that doctors specialist alone reached 74 % correct diagnostics, AI -helped specialists reached 76 %, But the only AI reached ... 90 % ! Clear, Human was losing 15 % efficiency at AI. The stake therefore consists, For each company, to reflect on the best complementarity so that the human assisted of the AI is greater than the only. Some professions will disappear, car, for some of them, The fight is lost in advance. A tile washing machine will be more efficient than a human. On the other hand, Other professions will emerge, like for example that of Chief Cognitive Officer, which will merge the functions of human resources director and IT director. Companies must integrate this strategic reflection into their business model. Another issue for them is to organize technological monitoring. We are witnessing such an explosion of AI capabilities that it seems essential to pool this day. Likewise, Companies will have to decide on their training choices : What to train, What rate ? To keep the course, s’adapter, while maintaining an acceptable pace of change for the teams. It is a work of strategic reflection that all companies must carry out without delay.
Luc Ferry : A business manager, If it can reduce the wage bill by investing in AI, will do it. But there will be job creation according to a Schumpeterian logic - the offer is at the origin of technical progress while routine behavior leads to immobility. If trades disappear, The question arises of the re -use of certain employees. It was proven, by experiences on pilot groups, that basic universal income was an aberration. People who benefited from it, far from taking advantage of it, And because they were no longer integrated into a social fabric, did not go well, Until falling into depression. On the other hand, it would be, I seem to me, possible to invent a kind of civic service for adults who would lose their work. This should go hand in hand with a societal valuation of these fulfilling activities in the sense that they would serve the common good.
Luc Ferry
Doctor of Political Science, Former Minister of National Education, philosophy. He was a researcher at CNRS and university professor. Luc Ferry has developed a liberal political philosophy focused on ecology, technology, family and religion.
Laurent Alexandre
Senior official, surgeon-urologist, entrepreneur, columnist, French writer and political activist, Co -founder of Doctissimo in 1999.
