This question makes no sense. Or rather, it is far too vague to make sense as it stands.

Which AI are we talking about? And beyond that, the question of how these AIs are used is central to understanding what we are talking about.

It is far too simplistic and wrong to classify individuals in the "For" camp and others in the "Against" camp. Whatever some may think, those who take pleasure in sterile comment-section quarrels on social networks. Let us try to extract ourselves from that trap.

This strategy of dividing to rule better, a principle as old as the world, is brought back into fashion by algorithms (LinkedIn especially) that amplify these splits: filter bubbles, echo chambers, shadow bans on posts that don't follow the standards pushing reaction and therefore attention.

Today, the overwhelming majority of AI-related posts that involve any kind of position invariably turn into an arena where the For and the Against confront one another (often through comments themselves written by AI).

But let us come back to uses.

Who would say they are opposed to traditional AI (computer vision, classification) used to detect cancerous tumours faster in patients? Not me, obviously, and probably not you either.

On the other hand, the use of a conversational chatbot oriented towards psychotherapy, launched without study, without safeguards, without training of either users or practitioners, then rolled out in production at large scale: I am obviously against, and with all my strength.

The first use is humanist, altruistic and socially justifiable, where the second is a medico-social time bomb, born from the mind of a handful of founders who optimise their valuation without worrying about social and human externalities.

Through my work I try to raise alarms about uses that seem to me, after relentless and obsessive reflection, very risky (and there are many). I raise alarms not to "look cool" or "get buzz" (I am also putting my career on the line here), but because I have the deep conviction that it must be done.

These alerts are not a luxury but a necessity.

I can already hear the techno-solutionists feeling their wings sprouting (made of wax, like Icarus) and "taming the AI" while alternating between a feeling of omnipotence and "I don't know what I'm doing". Those, I leave to their certainty.

But for the others, the most fragile and the least informed, these alerts are essential. And the silence concerning them is deafening.

They are our colleagues, our friends, our relatives, and our children. They do not have enough background to use these systems without putting themselves at risk on several important parts of their integrity.

To sum up, I am against a certain number of uses of generative AI. Specifically those that endanger three things:

Because in the end, the majority of AI uses are not at all those that AI sellers keep telling us about, nor those of the flat, insipid and dishonest narrative of a large part of the media.

And what to say of the governments and leaders who see in these systems the prophetic elixir for the degeneration of the great social systems of developed countries (health, education, public administration), while leaning on the symbiotic doctrine of the growth/technology duo to justify an all-in on AI that, in my view, is certainly irresponsible and probably complicit.

For or against Tech?

Similarly, we would need to define what is meant by Tech today. Many of my peers, friends and colleagues who have been in this field for several decades, like me, feel betrayed and caught in contradictory injunctions.

Each passing day, they are torn between the need to make a living and the need to remain true to a foundation of values broadly similar to mine.

What made us love and choose these professions are often stories where passion plays its role, curiosity, the desire to build.

But not to build systems potentially highly dangerous for civilisation as a whole.

We did not join the Tech industry to find ourselves swept up in frenzied developments where technology would surpass man, modify him, even annihilate him (the accelerationist current sees this option as valid and even desirable).

The Tech that led me to choose this professional path, along with a vast majority of my colleagues, is now on the verge of dying out. What will come after does not inspire much confidence in me.

Some people leave this industry out of disgust at what it has become and the trajectory it is on. I understand them. I have thought about it too.

And the anger, in all this?

You have probably felt some anger from me as you read these lines. I do not hide it. I am angry. It is actually an interesting and unprecedented anger for me. Raw, visceral.

Who once decreed that anger was to be banned, that it was an emotion to be inhibited? For me, anger is healthy when it comes as a reaction to an attack on values worth protecting. And I think we are in that case here.

Anger is vital energy, it is action. I prefer creative anger to inaction and I am not ashamed of it.

That said, anger alone is not enough. It points, it puts things in motion, but it must lead to something constructive. Otherwise it turns on itself and becomes what it denounces.

More to come, soon…