Do we Confuse, Innovation and Progress and would it be Dehumanization?
Progress is the evolution of mankind, from civilization to an ideal, and the origin comes from the Century of the lights and the Renaissance. It is a global improvement of our human condition and the notion of Progress aims to give a particular place to man in nature as well as a future after death for some, according to human cultures and beliefs. The technological revolutions we are experiencing, which are in the sense of innovation, replace the search for meaning, which should be an original value of progress, and bring only "simple" products or novelties. "Jill Lepore, The Disruption Machine," "The World May Not Be Getting Better and Better, But Our Devices Are Getting Newer And Newer" Many subjects and debates are gargling by talking about: Technology at the service of innovation, marketing and the added value of the company and that the digital will be human ... which seems antagonistic as a position !! Innovation, technological breakthroughs, the 'Digital', will take human account into account if it is accompanied by progress and not merely by products or services for humans which are considered by innovators only As a simple consumer who is somewhat enslaved ... For David Lacombled, President of La villa Numeris, "the digital is only worth if it makes the bet of the human and therefore the transmission of knowledge ". It is necessary to constantly repeat that it is essential to accompany, to evolve the behaviors of the consumer, and the man he is above all, to help him in his evolution while keeping his conscience of Humanity, its power of reflection, its free will with a critical and ethical mind. "We live in a time when, for essentially economic reasons, innovation has separated itself from progress. There are innovations that have nothing to do with progress ... but a lot with fashion! " Heinz Wismann, philosopher
At an exciting conference on Artificial Intelligence in the Senate organized within the IHEST, we were able to grasp the prodigious advances in scientific terms, and the ineluctable acceleration of the AI in terms of perception, Lists behaviors, learning to offer innumerable services to humans in terms of health, autonomy, protection, technologies, and even create emotional relationships between humans and robots .... Progress ... Innovations. ??
The famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawking did not hesitate in 2014 to prophesy that when the AI goes beyond the human intelligence, it will be the last human invention, the latter having then completely taken precedence over the human species!
Indeed, Artificial Intelligence or what should be called Heuristic Intelligence is the result of researchers and their pooling of all human intelligence ... for now! For between the one that is in progress, called the Restricted Artificial Intelligence, that which is called strong or of high level and finally the superintelligence which will be able to equal the man and thus surpass it we may have only a few decades before us .
What becomes to our species? Of course, the computational power of computers frees us from many tasks, and for simple everyday things we no longer need to retain phone numbers, where as our grandparents learn the departments and prefectures, Information that may seem unnecessary.
This allows us to free up time and not to clutter our brain with data that we can have, much more quickly and in a very reliable way ...
However, there can be very perverse effects ... systematic assistance does not lead to concentration efforts, memorization, the more we are distracted and the more we focus on speed to the detriment of depth. This may be true for our way of acquiring our knowledge, and our relationship to the other.
We have become multitasking, helped and solicited by digital tools but is it not possible that technology, in the forms in which it entered our daily life, has diminished us?
The screens more generally, develop the external attentional system. More clearly: it's the world that comes to pick you up more than you need to go to it. Michel Desmurget researcher. Specialized in cognitive neuroscience,
I often cite the example of the listening of a vinyl record face to the CD and Mp3 / 4 to my children, our ear has become accustomed to having a listening which is deprived of a wide spectrum of harmonies which deliberately diminishes us , the notion of listening, detail, and subtlety disappears in favor of the amount of music available. The same example with the camera ... without being retrograde the moment captured by the man, the look, the eye of the photographer, like Cartier Bresson, and many others comes from him alone. He had 24 or 36 poses, and he had to be master of the moment, master of his gaze.
Afterwards, the motorization already and then the digital have made that we straighten scenes, then we choose them, and we rework with software the picture. Of course, cliches are unique by photographers and talents, but ... what will become of our instinct, our gaze, our creativity, in the face of automatic or programmed substitutes, which risk making us "diminished" ?? To read a book is to "devote oneself" to the book, reading requires devotion, and this notion of devotion is of course valid for the "Other". To listen to someone is to take time, to have of empathy, and this is a generous act. Do are we going towards a listening of the other multitasking and not presential, which allows us to protect ourselves instead to face the individuals, swarming a few quick thoughts through the social networks, without risking to hear a voice, to take the time to see themselves, to protect themselves from too strong emotions ????
We try to avoid a work, an emotional effort to convey a simple information, and yet the human is an emotional tissue that differentiates us! It would be ridiculous to be "anti-technology" as indeed unquestionably "pro-technology" - but it is questions of balance, awareness, reactions, regulation and ethics that make our Lives depend on it as well as our Humanity.