"The robot is an extension of ourselves"

The International Journalism Festival returns for a third edition in the heart of the Aquitaine countryside on the banks of the Garonne. The gathering celebrating the professions of the pen and the (good) words of actuality is happening on July 13th, 14th and 15th in Couthures.

On the program of the event, always very determined topics, which are both front pages in the newspapers, are discussed in the citizen and press circles. That they worry us, we offend, ask us question, we are interested, the topics are presented and discussed by experienced speakers from all horizons, in an atmosphere of sharing and conviviality. This year, we will be particularly interested in the subject of artificial intelligence or living with robots, workshops prepared by Catherine Vincent, journalist in the World and Grégory Rozières who writes for the Huffpost.

Smart home badistant, voice control, smartwatch … artificial intelligences share more and more of our lives. Present in everyday objects, these have been strongly developed during the last decade. AIs are both synonymous with progress but obviously also raise fears. Will robots replace humans? Can they rebel and take control of the planet? These extreme questions may seem absurd to many, but a part of the population still adopts a technophobic position. In the workshop "From fantasy to reality : The robot smarter than man?", Three experts came to measure fears : Véronique Aubergé, CNRS researcher, Jean-Gabriel Ganascia, researcher and chairman of the CNRS ethics committee and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, designer and Research Director at the French Institute of Research in Computer Science and Automation. After a brief introduction to public mistrust of robots, the researchers recalled that the robots were well programmed by humans. It is therefore the designers and programmers who choose, since the robot has no consciousness and will react according to what he has learned from the hand of man. Today, the AI ​​are mainly used by companies for advertising purposes, including the collection of data on the web. Robots are part of the economic model of the web. What we also observe, note Véronique Aubergé, is a dematerialization of human relations in our connected world that is put in opposition with a rematerialization of robots. In other words, our real social interactions are more and more technology and body-less, whereas in our interactions with AIs we need material and we create objects-badistant-robots with whom to interact and that we can see physically. Finally, perhaps it is because we want to see ourselves in the robot, is it not our creation and the extension of ourselves? "All this is a part of us" says the researcher. We project a lot on the robot whereas finally, it is only what we make of him : it is a mirror of the human.