AI Summit in Paris Sparks Debate on Technology's Impact on Jobs and Society

On sidelines of AI Summit in Paris, unions denounce its harmful effects

In front of political and tech leaders gathered at a summit in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a strategy on Monday to make up for the delay in France and Europe in investing in artificial intelligence (AI) but was faced with a "counter-summit" that pointed out the risks of the technology. The use of chatbots at work and school is destroying jobs, professions and threatening the acquisition of knowledge, said union representatives gathered at the Theatre de la Concorde located in the Champs-Elysees gardens, less than a kilometer from the venue of the Summit for Action on Artificial Intelligence. Habib El Kettani, from Solidaires Informatique, a union representing IT workers, described an "automation already underway for about ten years," which has been reinforced with the arrival of the flagship tool ChatGPT at the end of 2022. "I have been fighting for ten years to ensure that my job does not become an endangered species," said Sandrine Larizza, from the CGT union at France Travail, a public service dedicated to the unemployed. She deplored "a disappearance of social rights that goes hand in hand with the automation of public services," where the development of AI has served, according to her "to make people work faster to respond less and less to the needs of users, by reducing staff numbers." Loss of meaning "With generative AI, it is no longer the agent who responds by email to the unemployed person but the generative AI that gives the answers with a multitude of discounted job offers in subcontracting," said Larizza. This is accompanied by "a destruction of our human capacities to play a social role, a division into micro-tasks on the assembly line and an industrialization of our professions with a loss of meaning," she said, a few days after the announcement of a partnership between France Travail and the French startup Mistral. "Around 40 projects" are also being tested "with postal workers," said Marie Vairon, general secretary of the Sud PTT union of the La Poste and La Banque Postale group. AI is used "to manage schedules and simplify tasks with a tool tested since 2020 and generalized since 2023," she said, noting that the results are "not conclusive." After the implementation at the postal bank, La Banque Postale, of "Lucy," a conversational robot handling some "300,000 calls every month," Vairon is concerned about a "generative AI serving as a coach for bank advisers." 'Students are using it' On the education side, "whether we like it or not, students are using it," said Stephanie de Vanssay, national educational and digital adviser of the National Union of Autonomous Unions (UNSA) for primary and secondary school. "We have indifferent teachers, worried teachers who are afraid of losing control and quality of learning, skeptics, and those who are angry about all the other priorities," she said. Developing the critical thinking of some 12 million students is becoming, in any case, "an even more serious concern and it is urgent to explain how to use these tools and why," de Vanssay said. The Minister of National Education Elisabeth Borne announced on Thursday the launch of a call for tenders for an AI for teachers, as well as a charter of use and training for teachers. "No critical thinking without interactions and without helping each other to think and progress in one's thinking, which requires intermediation," said Beatrice Laurent, national secretary of UNSA education. "A baby with a tablet and nursery rhymes will not learn to speak."

Trade group calls on AI Summit to 'urgently confront' impact on jobs

In a statement shared exclusively with Euronews Next, the group issued a warning to governments from around the world gathering for the Paris summit. One of Europe's biggest trade groups has called on French President Emmanuel Macron and the EU institutions to urgently confront Big Tech's dominance of artificial intelligence (AI), calling it a threat to work and societies. Shared exclusively with Euronews Next, the open letter from the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), which represents trade unions and 45 million workers across Europe, was sent to Macron on Monday as world leaders, tech companies and researchers gather in Paris for the AI Action Summit. The statement said that any efforts to ensure AI has "a positive impact on workers in the labour markets, quality jobs, and society will be annulled if AI is monopolised by a handful of tech companies". It warned that tech companies "focus on only their own power and profit cannot align with European values and the interests of European social partners in protecting workers in Europe". The ETUC called on governments attending the summit to commit to regulating the use of AI in the workplace, ensure trade unions are better represented at future AI summits and other AI-related intergovernmental meetings, and robustly enforce competition law such as measures to break up Big Tech. Generative AI (GenAI) tools could impact 300 million full-time jobs worldwide, which could lead to "significant disruption" in the job market, according to a 2023 report by Goldman Sachs. But this disruption could also bring opportunities, The World Economic Forum's 2020 Future of Jobs Reports predicted that automation could disrupt 85 million jobs by 2025 but that 97 million new jobs could be created by then. Tech leaders also say that AI will have an impact on society. On Sunday, OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman wrote on his blog that: "The historical impact of technological progress suggests that most of the metrics we care about (health outcomes, economic prosperity, etc.) get better on average and over the long-term, but increasing equality does not seem technologically determined and getting this right may require new ideas". "In particular, it does seem like the balance of power between capital and labour could easily get messed up, and this may require early intervention," he added. On the main stage of the summit on Monday, Christy Hoffman, the general secretary of UNI Global Union, warned that if workers affected by AI are not involved in talks, inequality could reach an immoral level. "We know from history that an inclusive AI transition is possible but far from guaranteed. According to even modest projections, many millions are likely to be displaced by AI over the next five years. And we can't sweep those people under the rug or watch them fall through the cracks," Hoffman said. "We have important choices to make about the kind of future we want, and time is running out. With the right ground rules, set by people-centred policies and hammered out through social dialogue and bargaining, we can rise together," she added.