A robot at the controls?

A few months ago, a journalism student from Lannion, on an internship at a newspaper in the west of France, told me: ‘When I finished my article, I asked my editor-in-chief to read it over to make sure it was well structured. He replied that I should just hand that job to AI.’ Full stop. The young man, though well used to this new technology, nearly fell off his chair. That is precisely the mistake to avoid with artificial intelligence: treating it as an agent that replaces people, rather than using it as a tool. Here, the apprentice no longer learns from his mentors’ feedback; he simply applies whatever the machine recommends. A sad reality.

Integrating AI calls for careful thought

You need to know what you are doing before building artificial intelligence into your business processes. Ask yourself: where will it bring me extra productivity? Which tasks should I automate? And… could it unsettle my teams? Its use must therefore be well considered. First, according to a Workday study, the productivity gain remains limited: 40% of the time saved is reportedly lost to checking and correcting errors. Next, the environmental cost of the data centres it relies on (which draw heavily on water) is enormous. Finally, our entire social system is under threat. In his book ‘Le dernier salaire’ (The Last Wage), Belgian economist Bruno Colmant points out that AI pays no social contributions: nothing towards healthcare, nothing towards pensions. That could hasten our downfall!