Frédéric Happe

My views on AI have radically shifted over the past few weeks, after spending way too much time reading about it and watching interviews of industry leaders and experts. First, I really love the tools. I spend $200 on Claude every month and the product is worth every penny for me. Probably even more. I think the existing tools can deliver significant increase to future GDP and help us solve major global challenges faced by humanity. However, I just cannot comprehend why the industry is not much more regulated, as its leaders and employees seem to request themselves. I meet a lot of people who have heard of the hugging face incident but don’t know the actual chain of events. If you don’t, you definitely should spend a least an hour reading about it. I also do not know why we need to follow the path that frontier labs are following, to develop ever more powerful models. It seems to me that they are enormous gains that are readily available if we deploy the current technology in economic and scientific organizations without pursuing a super intelligence that they say might kill us and more likely wreak havoc in society. I know a lot of people think these warnings are marketing tricks, and that’s a reasonable assumption. But I don’t see the point of taking such risks. My median scenario is that of many economists: AI will diffuse slowly and lift gdp growth by a percentage point or so, will cause some economic disruption on the way, but ultimately people will get new jobs and maybe work less. However, I am deeply uncomfortable with the absolutely wild level of uncertainty around this prediction. And to be honest, even setting the doom scenarios aside, I find the utopia scenarios of some industry leaders actually dystopian. And I think a large majority of the public would agree if they paid attention to what they’re saying. To their credit, they themselves agree publicly that they should not be the ones making these choices. A large majority of the public is now very skeptical of AI as a source of human progress, in particular among younger adults who use it the most. They should have a say. I don’t want to convince you of anything but to get informed about this topic, express yourself and vote accordingly.

Dieu sait que je pense que la société française doit consacrer une bien plus grande partie de ses ressources aux enfants et aux jeunes adultes, et que la jeunesse, qui a déjà payé un lourd tribut psychologique durant la pandémie, fait face à des angoisses légitimes. Ils veulent 10 milliards pour l’éducation, et je suis totalement de leur côté. Mais l’obsession autour de Parcoursup trahit une incompréhension totale des priorités. Je sais que je parle beaucoup de finances publiques, mais même ce sujet me paraît de second ordre à côté des changements sociétaux induits par l’intelligence artificielle. Nous vivons dans un pays avec un marché du travail très protecteur, et donc très défavorable aux nouveaux entrants. Les jeunes risquent d’en souffrir beaucoup. L’enjeu principal pour l’avenir est d’adapter les formations au monde qui se prépare.