“AI literacy, a major democratic challenge”

What was the goal of this report?

Jean-François Lucas: Generative AI is transforming our society at an unprecedented rate. Yet at the same time 16 million French people remain digitally excluded. AI literacy is therefore a democratic, social and economic imperative.

Literacy means having knowledge and a variety of skills to understand, use and harness a technological tool like AI. These skills and this knowledge thus allow people to make informed decisions when it comes to the use and adoption, or not, of this type of tool. And thereby avoid dependency, manipulation and the reproduction of biases.

Generative AI is democratising access to digital tools for traditionally excluded audiences, yet its informed use requires critical knowledge to ensure citizens’ intellectual autonomy in the face of strategies to maximise adoption by holders of technological capital. The primary challenge is to resolve the tension between the economic urgency of adoption of AI and the need for critical acculturation.

How does your report address the practical aspects of implementing AI literacy?

J.F. Lucas: The report clarifies the fundamental concepts of AI. The goal of literacy is to understand the founding principles in order to make informed choices. At the individual level, each decision-maker must therefore adopt a stance of intellectual responsibility. At the collective level, the report recommends a paradigm shift in initial training, for example, entailing a comprehensive rethinking of school curricula and defining a basis for reflection that integrates social and environmental justice.

What are the key recommendations for putting these proposals in place?

J.F. Lucas: Implementation requires enhanced coordination between all of the stakeholders, sustainable funding geared towards inclusion and life-long learning, a shared strategic vision and democratic governance, and specific redistributive mechanisms to develop the skills of all audiences in order to reduce inequalities in access to and use of the benefits of innovation. Support for digital parenting and local mediation are also essential.

The report refers to an “empowering” society. Is that not a somewhat theoretical goal?

J.F. Lucas: On the contrary, it is very concrete. Empowerment depends on the ability to not be locked into untransparent systems and mistaken beliefs. If AI becomes an invisible infrastructure that dictates to us — orientation, evaluation, prioritisation, misinformation — without understanding or possible recourse, we lose our autonomy. Conversely, AI that is understood, debated and supervised can be leveraged as a factor for individual and collective empowerment. It all depends on the framework we build collectively.

What message do you want readers to take away from this report?

J.F. Lucas: AI literacy is not an intellectual luxury: it is a prerequisite for democracy. The longer we wait to organise it at a collective level, the more we implicitly accept that these technologies take hold without any real control or debate. There has been talk of developing computer, media, digital and now AI literacy for twenty years now. Now is the time for action.