VIDEO. Artificial intelligence, a political and scientific subject that is hotly debated

For Asma Mhalla, who works on the political and geopolitical issues of technology, it is important to pay attention to media noise in the case of artificial intelligence. “We talk about artificial intelligence from morning to night so it recreates a market and an economic value, more habituation. Whether we talk about it for good or bad, we create a social acceptability of the subject, which allows, behind, to introduce other uses”, she explains.

Towards artificial intelligence endowed with emotions?

On the question of artificial intelligence, Asma Mhalla first makes the connection with human intelligence, which is one of our faculties. “The so-called human intelligence, ours, is a faculty of thinking, of reasoning. It is a capacity of memory, of reasoning, of imagination, but also of perception. And when we say perception, it’s the perception of others, of the world, therefore of otherness. And so the question of language very quickly arises, which sets our perception of the world and our relationship to others to music.”. For her, the question of artificial intelligence frightens because these new technologies try to simulate the singularity of man, his reasoning and his perception.

Until now, the artificial intelligences that we know are called “narrow” because they are programmed to perform specific tasks such as autonomous cars, conversational AIs. But the political and ideological objective of certain Silicon Valley designers and technologists is to arrive at general artificial intelligences which would be thought by themselves. “You have projects today, for example, which are presented by Yann Le Cun, who is the director of artificial intelligence research for the Meta group, which works on generative AIs, but which, in the long term, could integrate , say, the dimension of emotions” adds Asma Mhalla. Because for Yann Le Cun, emotion would improve the relevance of artificial intelligence responses. “So, with a purely utilitarian aim, innovation for innovation’s sake, without philosophical reflection around it, without political reflection on the notion of progress, and not innovation, we risk, in fact, entering a wall, with some pretty terrible damage and collateral damage. And that’s why the conversation today must be collective and political.”, confides Asma Mhalla.