How tech upsets public debate in democracies | EUROtoday

Nearly 1 billion questions… per day. Since its launch by the OPENAI firm, in 2022, the conversational agent Chatgpt – identical to Copilot (Microsoft), Gemini (Google) or Deepseek (of the eponymous firm) – has always seen the variety of its interlocutors enhance and, with them, that of the requests formulated. This fixed chatter between people and some machines is most frequently at low noise, within the privateness of an internet browser or a digital software. However, there is no such thing as a failure to arouse an avalanche of questions that are unfold out in newspapers, college journals and the rays of bookstores – and that are addressed this time from people to people.

One of those questions, declined in numerous formulations, could possibly be summarized as follows: “Artificial intelligence (AI), tool or threat to democracy? ». Discussions are righteous. Some, such as Jean-Gabriel Ganascia, professor at Sorbonne University and Connoisseur of AI issues, emphasize the risks that large models of pre-worn language, or “LLM”-in the long term-technique are based on agents such as Chatgpt, Copilot, Gemini or Deepseek-, on the quality of information circulating within our societies. Others, such as the collective of experts from the Jean Jaurès Foundation to treat the citizen contributions collected during the “nice nationwide debate” – the response provided, in 2019, by Emmanuel Macron to the movement of “yellow vests” -, boast the possibilities offered by these technologies to better take into account the votes of represented.

Of course, if the subject occupies so much the media space, it is first of all because it was introduced there as a sales argument by the first interested parties, namely players in the digital technology sector. These “Hastened to advertise their merchandise by emphasizing their supposedly professional -democratic qualities”notes Sébastien Broca, lecturer in information and communication sciences at Paris-VIII University. As often, Apple sets the tone: to boast the merits of its first “private pc”, the Macintosh, the company Table, in January 1984, on an advertising spot convening the work of George Orwell. Broadcast in prime time during the half-time of the Super Bowl, the clip presents a dystopian company where interchangeable masses are hypnotized by a “huge brother” promoting the benefits of single thought via a giant screen, also unique. Before a young athletic woman, a symbol of modernity, comes to break this monopoly of influence with hammer.

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