AI: techno-pessimism or techno-optimism?

February 25, 2025 Digital economy

Published in Les Echos – November 20, 2024 

Will the AI revolution benefit everyone or will it massively destroy jobs? The question remains open according to Frédéric Cherbonnier, for whom artificial intelligence could well revolutionize our societies and help them in their quest for innovation. 

Will our societies always be capable of innovating and benefiting from technological revolutions? This question has been pitting techno-pessimists against techno-optimists for years. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be changing the terms of the debate and proving the latter right. 

The main source of pessimism is the paradox posed by the development of information technology. A phrase attributed to Nobel Prize winner in economics Robert Solow has become famous: “You see computers everywhere but in the productivity statistics”. Specialists in economic growth such as R.-J. Gordon believed that we would never again experience technological revolutions on the scale of those of previous centuries...

Read more on Les Echos
Illustration: Photo Minh Pham, Unsplash