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At a time when households are being asked to make efforts to control their environmental impact, a recent CREDOC study shows that the higher the standard of living, the greater the carbon footprint of digital equipment. Wealthier households in particular are more equipped with terminals (computers, tablets, etc.) than modest households. This research also shows that the carbon footprint peaks among 18-24 year-olds, who have more recent and diverse equipment than their elders.The latest editions of the Digital Barometer show that the French remain insufficiently informed about the most effective ways of limiting the environmental impact of their digital practices. A footprint calculation that combines two frames of referenceThis study innovates by mobilizing two types of data: data from the 2023 Digital Barometer on digital equipment and usage, and data from the NegaOctet database, which examines the carbon impact of digital equipment by age group and standard of living.By combining data from these two repositories, it is possible to better understand which categories of the population generate the highest emissions.The carbon footprint of digital equipment takes into account the individual equipment rate, the duration of ownership of the various devices and the type of equipment held. For example, the manufacture of a TV set emits on average 4.5 times more CO2 than that of a smartphone.Estimating the carbon footprint of digital technology takes into account the number of devices available per person in the household (TV, desktop or laptop computer, tablet, smartphone, games console), the length of time the devices are owned and the carbon footprint of the various devices.The overall index obtained reveals categorical differences in the carbon impact of digital equipment. The higher the household standard of living, the greater the carbon footprint of digital equipmentThis footprint is estimated at 118 kg CO2e per year for low-income earners, and 138 kg CO2e for high-income earners.These differences are mainly due to the fact that the equipment rate increases with income level, since the length of time equipment is owned is comparable from one income bracket to the next.Low incomes are characterized by a lower equipment rate per individual, whatever the terminal: TV, computer, tablet or cell phone.High-income earners, meanwhile, are more equipped with computers and tablets than the rest of the population, equipment that has a higher carbon impact.Annual carbon footprint peaks among young peopleThe calculated index is significantly higher for 18-24 year-olds than for the rest of the population.The 18-24 age group has both a higher per capita equipment rate for all the equipment considered, and shorter appliance ownership times. This specificity could be at least partly linked to the life cycle: the 18-24 age bracket corresponds for many to the access to residential autonomy, a period that often rhymes with home equipment, and would explain why young people own more recent appliances.On the other hand, there is little difference between all age groups. The 25-39 age group, for example, has a footprint very close to that of the over-60s.While equipment has, on average, a larger carbon footprint than usage, the intensity of certain uses can compete with the weight of equipment in an individual's total carbon footprint. " The more intensive use of digital technology by young people could significantly increase the digital footprint of young people", observe the CREDOC authors, who mention in particular the more intensive use of smartphones among 18-24 year-olds, video-on-demand services and video viewing.Actions to reduce the impact of digital use are better respected by older peopleIn their forward-looking study on the environmental assessment of digital technology, ADEME and Arcep put forward three recommendations in 2023 to reduce the impact of household uses: extend their lifespan, limit the number of devices and make the purchase of reconditioned equipment more widespread.Extending their lifespan: 66% of French people try to increase the lifespan of their equipment, by taking care of it, having it repaired, etc. This is the second most common action of the eleven proposed. This is the second most common gesture among the eleven proposed. However, this practice is not in the majority among 18-24 year-olds (44%) and is less widespread than average among 25-39 year-olds (58%). Older people are more likely to adopt this gesture (72% over the age of 40).Limiting the number of items of equipment is observed by 49% of French people. Once again, this practice increases with age: only a third of 18-24 year-olds do so, versus 61% of those aged 70 and over. "It seems that this propensity is not just declarative: younger people have a greater variety of equipment at their disposal. However, this data needs to be qualified: older people benefit less from the pooling of equipment, which does not go in the direction of limiting their number. For example, the over-70s own, on average, just over one television per person, compared with 0.6 for the under-25s.Reconditioning: only 28% of Internet users say they buy reconditioned digital terminals as much as possible. The younger the Internet users, the more they say they adopt this practice, from 35% of 12 to 17 year-olds to 19% of those aged 70 and over. " A lesser adherence to these modes of consumption within the older generations, but also the lower prices of these reconditioned terminals could partly explain these differences," comments CREDOC."The French are gradually becoming aware of the environmental impact of digital technology," concludes CREDOC.However, only 52% of French people consider themselves sufficiently informed, while 45% deplore a lack of information. A large majority, however, show a real desire to reduce the impact of their practices, in particular by acting on the durability of their equipment (80%) and, to a lesser extent, by moderating their digital uses (69%).

ForewordAccording to the Baromètre du numérique 2024, published on March 17, 2025, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has risen sharply in one year among the French population: 33% of French people have already used them in 2024, compared with 20% in 2023. This strong progression is accompanied by a high level of mistrust of these artificial intelligence tools for the majority of the population, although this mistrust is declining as personal use of these tools increases. Moreover, AI use is influenced by gender and age.Growing use of AIUses of artificial intelligence in the context of private life dominate (26%, +10 points in one year), slightly outstripping those linked to professional life (22%, also +10 points over the same period). Gender and age are factors that influence the use of AI.Men use artificial intelligence tools more than women, both in their private and professional lives.By 2024, 25% of men will be using them professionally, compared with 20% of women, and 30% of men will be using them in their private lives, compared with 22% of women.This gender gap remains similar to that observed in 2023. To shed some light on these findings, the authors of the survey mention two recent studies (see below) which indicate that, even when working in the same jobs, men are more likely to turn to artificial intelligence and ChatGPT than women. " According to these studies, women's lack of self-confidence could be partly responsible for this situation: women who don't use artificial intelligence more often than men indicate their need for training to use this new technology." 69% of 18-24 year-olds have already used AIAs in 2023, 18-24 year-olds are the age group that most frequently uses artificial intelligence tools in their professional lives or as part of their studies. Thus, 69% of them have already used AI in this context, compared with 41% of 25-39 year-olds. What's more, 58% of 18-24 year-olds use AI in their private lives, compared to 41% of 25-39 year-olds.These generational gaps were already present in 2023, in similar proportions. The majority of French people do not trust artificial intelligence56% of French people have no confidence in artificial intelligence, with 21% expressing strong distrust. It should be noted that distrust of artificial intelligence decreases with personal use. Respondents who have already integrated artificial intelligence into their professional lives, studies or daily lives are more confident overall (74%) than those who have not yet used it (26%). "Without being able to determine with any certainty the direction of the correlation: have those most open to AI been more inclined to adopt it? Or is it the use of AI that reinforces confidence in this technology? " comment the survey's authors. More users, men tend to trust artificial intelligence more than women: 45% of men declare themselves confident, compared to 38% of women, a gap of 7 points. Moreover, distrust of artificial intelligence increases with age. Older people are more skeptical than younger ones: 70% of those aged 70 and over express distrust, compared with only 38% of 18-24 year-olds. AI is mostly perceived as a threat in the employment and artistic creation sectorsOpinions on the impact of AI on the environment and sustainable development remain divided, with no clear consensus (48% see it as a threat, 48% as an opportunity). Finally, in the field of education and training in 2024, AI is slightly more often perceived as an opportunity (50%), although a significant number of respondents (47%) still see it as a threat. In all the fields assessed, men are more likely than women to perceive artificial intelligence as an opportunity rather than a threat. This difference is particularly noticeable in the environment sector, where 53% of men see AI as an opportunity, compared to 43% of women. Similarly, men are more likely than women to see AI as an opportunity in education and training (55% of men versus 46% of women).Younger generations are clearly more optimistic than their elders about the impact of artificial intelligence. Young people are consistently among the respondents who most frequently perceive AI as an opportunity, across all fields.

ForewordDriven by the "Public Action 2022" plan, which aimed to dematerialize all administrative procedures by 2022, the dematerialization (or digitization) of administrative procedures has gradually established itself as a new public service standard.Online administrative procedures have become common practice for a large majority of the French population. In fact, in 2024, according to the Digital Barometer73% of French people have carried out an administrative procedure on the Internet in the last twelve months.However, this widespread use is accompanied by numerous difficulties. Indeed, almost one in two French people (44%) encounter difficulties in carrying out administrative procedures online. Interestingly, the main difficulties cited by the French are not linked to a lack of digital skills, but rather to problems in administrative relations.These results (detailed below) suggest that we need to think in terms of the right mix of digital mediation and administrative mediation to support the public in dealing with administrative procedures online. Indeed, the complementary nature of the work carried out by these professionals appears to be a key factor in preventing the burden and responsibility for the smooth running of administrative procedures being shifted onto individuals. Trends in the use of online administrative proceduresIn 20 years, the use of the Internet for administrative formalities has risen by 51%, from 22% to 73% for the French population as a whole. Significant differences by age group and level of qualification The 25-39 and 40-59 age groups are the most likely to carry out administrative procedures online, with 82% and 84% of users respectively in 2024, proportions stable compared to 2022.Conversely, the 12-17 age group and the 70+ age group are less frequent users than the intermediate age groups, although there has been an overall increase.More than age, level of education is a discriminating factor when it comes to using the Internet for administrative procedures: The extent to which people carry out administrative procedures online varies greatly according to their level of education. Higher education graduates use the Internet almost twice as much as non-graduates (84% vs. 45% respectively).In terms of trends, it's worth noting that the rate of people who have carried out administrative procedures online has plateaued among graduates, and is rising among those with few or no qualifications. Nearly 1 in 2 French people have difficulty completing administrative procedures online44% of French people are concerned by the difficulties that can be encountered in carrying out administrative procedures on the Internet. Young adults (aged 18-24) are by far the most likely to experience difficulties (69%), followed by those on low incomes (52%) and those with no qualifications (50%). It's worth noting that these last two categories of the population are also the ones most concerned by the process of accessing rights. When we look in detail at these difficulties, we can see that among the reasons given, lack of digital skills is only the 4th reason expressed by the French (11%): In reality, the three main reasons for the difficulties encountered in completing administrative procedures online seem to have more to do with the disintermediation of the citizen-administration relationship produced by dematerialization.First of all, this direct contact with the administration, making the user responsible for the administrative procedure, produces a fear of making a mistake that affects 18% of the population.Secondly, the support for this digitized administrative relationship also seems to be a major source of difficulty, with 16% of the population believing that the website for the process is not well designed.Finally, this digitalized relationship with the administration confronts users with administrative language that is incomprehensible for 13% of the population. Other difficulties encountered by the population are very much in the minority, such as difficulty in writing (4%), reading (2%) or disability (2%).While the development of digital skills appears necessary, if only to access online procedures, the results suggest that it is rather the lack of administrative skills within the population that seems to play a major role in the difficulties encountered in carrying out online administrative procedures.Level of difficulty in completing administrative procedures online correlates with standard of livingAmong low-income earners, more than one in two (52%) experience at least one problem of this kind, compared with only 38% of high-income earners.What the poorest people fear most is making a mistake (22%, 4 points higher than the national average). Yet " non-contributory social benefits account for 38% of the disposable income of poor households (14% minimum social benefits, 11% housing assistance, 10% family benefits and 3% activity allowance). On average, they increase the standard of living of poor people by 347 euros per month, without however enabling them to cross the poverty line ". The importance of income from social transfers explains how, for these households, the consequences of an error could prove highly penalizing. Low-income earners, on the other hand, are more likely than average to feel that they are not competent enough to use the Internet (13%), but this reason for difficulty is only in 4th place among the proposed items. A necessary link between digital mediation and administrative mediationBy disintermediating the citizen-administration relationship, the digitization of administrative procedures requires not only physical access to the Internet and certain technical skills, but also, and above all, a mastery of language, writing and, more broadly, administrative procedures.Thus, in this context, the subject of access to rights relies on a "practical sense of administration", i.e. on a set of administrative skills that are not initially linked to digital technology (identifying the right contact, translating one's situation into administrative categories, identifying the status of documents, reporting a possible problem, etc.).What's more, the fact that almost one in two French people have difficulty completing administrative procedures online ( a higher proportion than those who are not digitally literate) suggests that the impact of dematerialization of administrative procedures should go beyond the technological question, and be linked to the digital skills of individuals. However, this does not rule out the possibility that dematerialization may confront certain groups with complex digital practices.These observations suggest that we need to think in terms of how we support the public in taking administrative steps online, with the right mix of digital mediation and administrative mediation.The complementary nature of these professionals' work is a key factor in preventing the burden and responsibility for the smooth running of administrative procedures being shifted onto individuals.To find out more: French digital society: digital mediation professionals face the challenge of digital remoteness.

For several months, the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) set out to " decipher the consequences of the growing deployment of AI in our societies, from the consideration of global issues - the impact of AI on the exercise of our fundamental rights and individual freedoms, the technology's environmental footprint and the imperative of European strategic autonomy".On January 14, the EESC issued an opinion setting out its initial conclusions on the acceptability of AI.AI, a political objectFor the CESE, " AI is not neutral; it is part of a society where many inequalities persist, reflecting it and helping to shape it in return, at the risk of amplifying pre-existing inequalities. Algorithms, and therefore the results they produce, are programmed by designers of AI models and systems ". The EESC therefore sees AI " as the result of political choices, made primarily by human beings, making this technology a political object ".For the EESC, any deployment of an AI solution, system or infrastructure must be subject to an approach and a framework that takes account of the major issues that make up the general interest:" The societal utility of AI must be systematically taken into consideration. AI can only develop if it serves human beings and the general interest.The development of an AI model, system or infrastructure must be subject to prior analysis and democratic control by public authorities and social partners.Citizens' choice and critical thinking must be exercised democratically, in all circumstances, whether for the use of an AI system or the deployment of an infrastructure. This choice also calls for the ability to give up, even after adopting or using an AI.Short-, medium- and long-term evaluation must be made possible, which presupposes the ability to guarantee the transparency and explicability of the technology. Failure to achieve the major objectives defined collectively should be able to call deployment into question and enable a step backwards. "Continuity, equality and adaptabilityThree classic principles of public law have a direct impact on the deployment of AI in public services:"The principle of continuity, which requires that the public service be provided effectively and at all times, calls into question both the State's dependence on AI suppliers (in particular to avoid any form of disruption in the supply and maintenance of software) and issues of sovereignty (over the storage and processing of sensitive data).The principle of equality requires us to avoid all forms of discrimination by guaranteeing access to public services for all, and obliges the State to combat illiteracy.the principle of adaptability requires public services not only to keep pace with technical progress, but also to respond to society's expectations: this principle can be interpreted as an injunction to "update the software" of public action, and to question the validity of the planned transformations. AI-proofing public servicesThe CESE reviews a number of AI systems deployed in public services. In particular, it passes harsh judgment on the integration of AI within the French Public Finance Authority (DGFIP): an example, in its view, of " an uncoordinated deployment with unclear general interest objectives ".On the contrary, other examples show that AI can be used to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public services. The CESE mentions, by way of example, the Albert project, a tool put at the service of France Services agents, which " makes it possible to communicate the right information to citizens without asking agents to be omniscient, in a context where regulations are increasingly complex and constantly evolving".Even when rendered by an AI, an individual public decision must be explainedFollowing in the footsteps of the French Human Rights Ombudsman, the CESE points out that " even when rendered by an AI, an individual public decision must be able to be explained (...) However, language models do not currently make it possible to trace the way in which a result was produced, the reasons why a given decision was taken by the algorithm, or to detect false answers. Generative AI provides plausible and possible answers, according to mathematical probabilities, preventing neither errors nor hallucinations".Questioning goals to prioritize projectsAccording to the CESE, the integration of AI requires administrations to consider a series of questions: "Why is this modernization essential: to improve service quality? to cut costs? to reduce the number of public-sector employees? By questioning the aims of the transformation, this makes it possible to prioritize the most transformative projects, taking into account ethical criteria and the principles inherent in public service".In conclusion, the EESC calls for AI systems to be deployed, but on two conditions:"that they improve the quality of public service and the working conditions of the employees who contribute to it;that the obligations of transparency, accountability and explicability are truly applied, when AI systems are deployed to enforce the law (for example, to calculate the amount of a tax), when they prove unavoidable (following the example of Parcoursup) or when they lead to individual decisions producing legal, economic or social effects that affect people".In line with its previous opinions, the EESC recommends :"systematically offer support and a human welcome as an alternative to paperless service, as is the case with the France Service spaces;to enshrine in law the principle of a right to non-digital technology, and guarantee equal access and freedom of choice for all".

For 18 months, some 50 participants from the worlds of labor and management, business and government, worked to develop Dial-IA, "an operational toolbox designed to foster technological social dialogue around AI".This project, coordinated by the Institut de Recherches Économiques et Sociales (IRES) and co-financed by ANACT (Agence nationale pour l'amélioration des conditions de travail), involved four trade unions in particular: CFDT, CFE-CGC, FO Cadres and UGICT-CGT.The project resulted in a joint manifesto and a series of fact sheets designed to help stakeholders become acculturated:AI basics;Mapping the issues;Artificial intelligence systems development situations SIA."Talking AI collectively within the company".The toolbox also suggests "levers to activate in order to implement a technological social dialogue approach", aimed primarily at employee representatives.She reviews the various reasons why employees and employers are talking and negotiating about artificial intelligence.AI is an issue of employer attractiveness: a strong majority of the more than 1,100 people surveyed by ODOXA for SAP agree that a company at the forefront of artificial intelligence appeals to young people (77%), is ahead of its competitors (72%), attracts talent (67%) and is more profitable (61%).The younger generations who are and will be entering the job market are already using AI, and increasingly so: young people aged 16 to 25 are already using AI on a massive scale. Nearly 8 out of 10 young people (79%) have used an AI tool during their studies or when choosing their career path. Of these, more than half (55%) say they use it at least once a month, and 25% every week.AI and the professional uses of executives, a milestone has been reached: According to a survey by the Association Pour l'Emploi des Cadres (APEC), 71% of executives believe that AI tools could be useful to them, and 53% say they want to start training in the use of these new tools. Companies have understood this: 1 in 4 executives is now encouraged by their company to use AI in their professional activity. The number of executives who have already tested AI at work has doubled in one year (41% vs. 19% in 2023), and 34% of executives see AI as an opportunity for their job.Investment cost is the main brake on the deployment of AI technologies: dialogue helps keep costs under control. According to a Pôle Emploi survey of 3,000 establishments with more than 10 employees, 45% of respondents (51% in Industry) felt that cost was the main brake on deploying this technology.AI technology at work can be scary, all the more reason to talk about it: 44% of employee respondents fear that their job will be replaced by an AI or robot (+9 points since 2017). According to Odoxa's findings, "French employees are aware that reducing the risks of AI on employment necessarily involves bringing decision-makers and workers up to speed in this area". Six out of ten thus consider it necessary for companies to "offer their employees training and advice, provided by specialists, on how to use artificial intelligence in their day-to-day work".AI touches on subjects that concern us all: "Protecting privacy, respecting the intellectual property of a work and its copy, questioning what is true and what is not, what is truly humanly created and what is not, defining the ethical lines in corporate and social usage"."Only one out of every two AIS projects developed in-house comes to fruition".The Dial-IA project participants identify the various reasons for these failures:a total lack of understanding of the structural characteristics of any AIS:the essential role of the human element in qualifying the data that feeds the algorithm at the heart of AIS operationsa specific iterative deployment process that distinguishes AIS from traditional IS solutions,the employer easily gives in to the siren song of "digital solutionism" rather than questioning the organization of his companythe IAT is too often imposed in a top-down, forced fashionthe question of the real needs of the company's players is rarely asked upstream of the processinsufficient/inappropriate support for employees during the deployment phasea lack of fair social dialogue on the subject: informing/consulting the CSE at the operational launch of the project does not in itself guarantee useful and constructive social dialogue on the subject.real mistrust on the part of stakeholders inside the company: from HR to professionals in professions impacted by AI"This simple observation should convince the employer of the importance of organizing a collective debate on AI within the company, since the ultimate aim is to prevent the additional costs generated by the project's failure from replacing the hoped-for productivity gains. On the basis of this shared observation, it seems appropriate to focus these spaces for collective debate within the company on the crucial question of the key role of company professionals in the success of the AIS project: both in defining the target needs to which the AIS will have to respond in complementarity with the "professions", and in clarifying the central role of the human factor throughout the project's deployment".On this occasion, fundamental questions will emerge:How will existing professions evolve?What new professions are emerging?HR support for employees undergoing career transition?Which activities to outsource and which not?

The growing deployment of artificial intelligence systems (AIS) in companies and government agencies is raising major questions about the future of work.After two years of surveys, the LaborIA action-research laboratory, set up by the French Ministry of Labor and lnria, has published groundbreaking results on human-machine interactions and the challenges of appropriating AI in the world of work.Survey resultsAfter gathering the perceptions of stakeholders (decision-makers, designers, engineers and employees) in different types of organizations (private companies, public authorities, public institutions), the survey reveals three types of results.The deployment of AIS in organizations is not the end point of innovation processes, but rather a new starting point.First result: the deployment of AIS in organizations is not the end point of innovation processes, following the phases of ideation, prototyping and experimentation.Human-machine interactions involve extended and uncertain learning periods. Workers must not only use AIS, but also engage in their maintenance, improvement and supervision.Work that is often little or poorly recognized by organizations, leading to disengagement and long-term failure of AI projects.The failures and successes of AI projects also depend on conflicting work priorities.The survey reveals an opposition between an AI management logic, promoted by designers/decision-makers, and a "logic of real work, specific to employees".Managerial logic sees AI as "a means of optimizing processes, reducing the risk of errors or even improving performance and increasing labor productivity".The logic of real work is driven more by issues of appropriation of AI in work activity, "raising questions in terms of recognition, autonomy, responsibility and meaning of work". Thus, as the authors of the study note, " during the deployment of AIS, the priorities of decision-makers often come up against the concerns of workers faced with changes in their tasks, skills and working conditions".This conflict of rationalities is a source of ambivalence and paradox: "AIS are as much perceived as useful assistants (saving time, facilitating work) as they are as a source of threats (to their jobs or work content), as a promising solution capable of performing complex tasks as they are software lacking in maturity, stability, relevance and reliability".Rationality conflict can lead to very different results, depending on the ability of organizations to establish compromises between different stakeholders."The absence or failure of such compromises gives rise to alienating human-machine configurations (overconfidence or caution with regard to AI, loss of skills and autonomy...) in which workers feel dispossessed of their work".Conversely, the presence of a successful rationality compromise "gives rise to enabling configurations in which AIS increase human skills".The deployment of AIS in organizations can have unexpected effects on work organization and management.These unexpected effects include a reconfiguration of professional roles and qualification frames of reference, a questioning of the role of the middle manager, polarization of work, and so on.What's more, if AI changes work (and its organization), work also changes AI: "different modes of work organization - highly hierarchical/centralized or, on the contrary, leaving more room for autonomy - strongly influence the reception and appropriation of an AIS". Six recommendations for technological social dialogueCreating the conditions for AI-enabled work"The effects of AIS deployment are therefore manifold, from the individual performing his or her work, to the tasks, activities and methods required to carry it out, via changes in job references, qualifications and skills, and the reorganization of management and work organization"."Never definitively established, these consequences can be ambivalent, contradictory, but also profoundly alienating or empowering, depending on the outcome given to the rationality conflicts", add the authors of the study . "A final major contribution of this study consists in identifying the conditions of possibility of the rationality compromise and the conditions of emergence of empowering configurations".Involve workers in the innovation process, from the outset, to enable the emergence of a rationality compromise.More than a simple consultation to facilitate adoption, it's a question of starting from real work (" what workers really do - rather than prescribed work - what workers do in theory") to make well-being, quality and meaning of work possible.Ensure co-design of AIS and organize ongoing dialoguePromote close interaction with all the protagonists of the AIS project - the decision-maker, the designer, the engineer and operator, the employee representative bodies - in order to co-define the socio-technical configuration:The goal of AI now and in the future;AI usage rules ;Tooling ergonomics and interface ;The distribution of roles and tasks, including maintenance, improvement and supervision, and determining the appropriate forms of recognition for these activities;Algorithm parameterization and acceptable level of error in the work."Considering the dynamic, learning and empirical properties of AIS, these interactions are not limited to an initial design phase: they must be continuous, organized and collegial with a view to developing a collective culture of the uses and impacts of AIS on work".Putting AI to work to make workers safer"Aiming for an increase in safety that reassures workers", i.e. the deployment of AIS focused on improving the quality of working life, reducing socio-professional risks and supporting professional practices(AI as a "safety catch")."This security then makes possible new forms of interaction and new uses that deliver the full value of AIS: performance, quality and productivity.Making AIS "explainable": opening the black boxStrive to make AI operations and results understandable to workers in real-life situations.Without referring here to the high-level discussions and controversies on the explicability of algorithms, "what we're talking about here is situated explicability, which puts the AIS to the test in its context of use to concretely evaluate how the worker's understanding of its results influences his or her power to act".Learning by doing: accepting a degree of unpredictability in the upheavals produced by AITake into account the potential unexpected effects of AI on workers, work and the organization."The empirical nature of AIS can give rise to new situations linked to the heterogeneity of workers' interpretations, to discrepancies between situations experienced and situations dealt with by AIS, and to learning by both AIS and workers".These situations need to be the subject of feedback to develop a shared culture of usage and appropriate organizational postures: tolerance of error, taking the initiative, technological social dialogue, quality conflict, i.e. the possibility of deliberating on the quality criteria of work with AIS. Le laborIAIn response to one of the recommendations of the Villani Report, the French Ministry of Labor and Employment and Inria have jointly founded LaborIA in 2021, "a laboratory aimed at building and consolidating a field vision to better identify artificial intelligence and its effects on work, the workforce, employment, skills and social dialogue".LaborIA's objectives are to enlighten the public debate on the impacts of the spread of AI in organizations, to produce recommendations to foster the development of responsible AI and to support the decision-making of the Ministry in charge of labor and employment .

ForewordYoung people's perceptions of the digital world are often based on a series of stereotypes: excessive screen time, focus on social network content alone, overexposure to disinformation... A number of surveys, however, counter these stereotypes and reveal, without idealizing them, the wide diversity of digital uses among young people.In 2023, CNIL teams carried out a major analysis and survey of the digital practices of teenagers. After reporting on the main findings of social science research on these practices, they conducted a survey on the digital practices of 11- to 14-year-olds.In its series of studies entitled "The French digital society", the ANCT takes a look at the persistent myth of "digital natives", which wrongly leads to young people being considered de facto experts in digital technologies. On the contrary, young people's digital practices are differentiated, heterogeneous and, above all, unequal.Piloted by the DJEPVA, the annual Youth Barometer has been surveying around 4,000 young people aged 18 to 30 since 2016. Over the years, this Youth Barometer usefully documents the evolution of the various forms of commitment and participation of young people in public life. In 2024, the Barometer found that "young people's commitment is not weakening, but is tending to change".A CREDOC survey conducted in 2022 among 1,500 young people aged 14 to 18 shows that despite the omnipresence of screens, writing practices are not disappearing. The survey, commissioned by the association Lecture Jeunesse, explores the different contexts of writing outside school (functional or leisure uses), the writing methods used (handwritten or digital) and the profile of young people who are moving away from this practice.The title of this dossier is taken from a conference organized in March 2024 as part of Numérique en Commun[s]. ANCT's Digital Society Program joined forces with the newspaper Le Monde to decipher young people's relationship with the digital world. The conference looked at the risks and opportunities that the Internet and digital technology present for young people, while questioning the balance between an overly alarmist or overly confident attitude towards these so-called " digital natives ". Digital teenagers: what the social sciences have to sayAs part of the CNIL's work to help young people protect their privacy, Mehdi Arfaoui, a sociologist at the CNIL's Digital Innovation Laboratory (LINC), and Jenny Elbaz, head of the CNIL's digital education mission, have undertaken to share the findings of research into the social sciences of digital teenagers.As Mehdi Arfaoui and Jenny Elbaz observe, the first observation in the literature is that digital activities play a key role in the social relationships of teenagers in general. Their daily lives are " made up of injunctions to digital presence and hyperconnectivity prompted by the principle of feedback (like, comment, share, even private message) and by reputation issues ". Digital technology encourages a blurring of the boundaries between "private life" and "public life", due in particular to the social value placed on sharing intimacy and the phenomenon of habituation to self-exposure.The quest for autonomy in adolescence generates a competitive game between family norms, school norms and peer group norms. " Most digital activity takes place not only out of sight, but also "out of mind" of adults, who have no knowledge of how the platforms mobilized work".Adolescence is a time for building a relationship with control (parental or academic) and exploring self-control. Adolescents recognize their need for limits, particularly through parental supervision. "However, when these modalities are not negotiated, or when they encroach heavily on their intimacy, they can be questioned and delegitimized by adolescents. The modalities of parental control can thus alternate or complement each other depending on the period, and are regularly renegotiated between parents and children".Numerous social, gender and class inequalities are expressed at different points in teenagers' digital practices. 11-14 years: a step-by-step appropriation of digital technologyTo better understand how teenagers view their own practices, the CNIL conducted a qualitative survey of 120 schoolchildren aged 11 to 14.The acquisition of digital devices (computer, phone, tablet), access to a number of applications and the creation of accounts all take place in stages, often following a non-linear trajectory.The stage that precedes the acquisition of their own tools is crucial: for the most part, middle-schoolers were introduced to digital technology long before they arrived at school: within the family, through their parents, or through the teenagers and young adults around them. " The first forms of digital appropriation often take place by proxy on the family tablet or directly on a parent's phone, whose use must be negotiated (time spent, installation of an application, etc.). In this case, children first reproduce uses that are authorized and/or valued by the family framework and tools".Subsequently, the acquisition of their own equipment also takes place in stages. For the majority of students, the acquisition of a smartphone and/or an Internet package takes place when they enter college, or a few months before/after. Some parents try to resist this group effect, either by keeping the touchtone phone against the child's wishes, or by switching to other types of device such as the tablet. The acquisition of one's own equipment and the type of equipment chosen for the child depend on a family organization already in place." In this way, the diversity of acquisition methods highlights the inequalities between households". 11-14 years: multiple injunctions for useOne of the surprises for the authors of the survey of 11-14 year-olds lies in the place occupied in the routines of 11-14 year-olds by the school's digital working environment (ENT). Teenagers often consult the ENT application as soon as they wake up, "to see if a teacher is absent", and before turning off the phone, "to check my timetable".More generally, when they acquire a phone or tablet, children don't usually make it a priority to join a social network. In fact, 11-14 year-olds, like their parents, are rather wary of digital spaces where they can be put into contact and visibility with strangers. The first uses are much more associated with passions (drawing, sports) and the consumption of cultural and leisure goods (video games, films and music, via Spotify, YouTube or Netflix).The creation of social network accounts comes later, first to interact with family members and peers. Installing additional applications is generally a gradual process, with schoolchildren only creating an account once the application has proven its worth. What's more, for many of them, the installation of an application is still subject to parental authorization.A frustrated relationship with supportAdolescence is a time of increasing digital injunctions. The standards to which adolescents are subjected are numerous and sometimes contradictory. The ways in which parents support their children's use of digital technology vary according to the family context (in particular, the parents' willingness and availability).Whatever the parents' style of support, schoolchildren accept and value parental mediation. " Adolescents' fear is less of being controlled in their digital use than of being prevented or punished without consideration for their real and concrete use (...) Parents' lack of knowledge of or trust in their children can lead to a circumvention of parental rules, likely to make their children's practices even more secretive for parents". Unequal digital skills and practices19% of 18-24 year-olds are not digitally literate. This figure, taken from the report La société numérique française : définir et mesurer l'éloignement numérique (French Digital Society: Defining and Measuring Digital Distance), clashes with the idea that there are such things as "digital natives ". The notion of "digital natives " conveys the idea that young people, because they were born with, or even in, digital technology, have a better grasp of digital technologies, their codes and related uses than older generations."A large number of studies show that the digital skills and practices of young people are differentiated, heterogeneous and, above all, unequal, insofar as they are dependent on very different social contexts". As a result, many young people, particularly those from low-income backgrounds, encounter difficulties in their use of digital technology, for example, in the context of their academic success or professional integration, for a variety of reasons ranging from the cost of computer equipment to a lack of confidence in their ability to learn and train with online tools."Despite using the Internet more intensively than their elders, usage does not guarantee expert use of these technologies," note the report's authors from CREDOC (Centre de Recherche pour l'Étude et l'Observation des Conditions de Vie) and CREAD (Centre de recherche sur l'éducation, les apprentissages et la didactique de l'Université de Rennes 2). Parents' cultural and digital capital plays an important role in the degree to which young people master digital tools. "The more cultural capital parents possess and the more digital skills they have developed themselves, the more they supervise their children's digital practices from an early age. Conversely, the fewer parents - often from low-income backgrounds and with few qualifications - have developed digital skills, the more they rely on schools to teach them the uses and best practices"." It's no surprise, then, that digital inequalities are very much in evidence in the education sector. ".As a result, the authors point out that the idea of digital natives is a " myth ". myth " Unfortunately, it still permeates collective imaginations, including those of young people themselves. " Unfortunately, it still permeates collective imaginations, including those of young people themselves: some of them integrate the idea that they are supposed to be digital experts, provoking a feeling of guilt and a lack of knowledge. a feeling of guilt among some of those who feel uncomfortable with digital tools ". Digital engagement, the number one way young people participate in public life"Contrary to what is often put forward in the dominant discourse, young people have not given up all involvement in public affairs. Recent surveys have shown that they are even more engaged than the not-so-young, putting certain preconceived ideas into perspective, describing them as massively withdrawn into a frigid individualism and locked into civic apathy", observes political scientist Anne Muxel, CNRS Research Director at Cevipof (Sciences Po), in TheConversation.Numerous studies have highlighted the singularity of this age group. With regard to voting, surveys on electoral participation show that, overall, young people are more likely to abstain than older people, even if the majority of them vote intermittently rather than systematically. In 2023, the Baromètre de la Jeunesse reported that 18-30 year-olds were more involved in other forms of participation (petitions, taking part in demonstrations, strikes, civil disobedience actions, etc.) than their elders. Signing a petition or defending a cause on the Internet or social networks remained, for example, the most widespread form of civic involvement among 18-30 year-olds (40% versus 32% of those aged 31 and over in 2023).Two recent surveys document this finding of a commitment by young people that is not weakening, but tending to change": the Baromètre 2024 de la jeunesse (Youth Barometer 2024 ) from the Direction de la jeunesse, de l'éducation populaire et de la vie associative (DJEPVA) and the " Jeune(s) en France" survey for The Conversation France. These two surveys provide a clearer picture of young people's state of mind, their confidence or concern about the future, the causes they defend and the ways in which they get involved.Read more : Digital engagement, the number one way young people participate in public life Digital technology doesn't turn young people away from writingDespite the omnipresence of screens, writing practices are not disappearing. This is shown by a CREDOC survey survey conducted in 2022 among 1,500 young people aged 14 to 18. The survey, commissioned by the association Lecture Jeunesse, explores the different contexts of writing outside school (functional or leisure uses), the writing methods used (handwritten or digital) and the profile of young people who are moving away from this practice.Even though 87% of 12-18 year-olds are equipped with smartphones, writing is still very much a part of life among the 14-18 year-olds surveyed. 92% of 14-18 year-olds write at least "sometimes" in their daily lives, and 60% write regularly, i.e. "every day or almost every day". Within this age group, the frequency of writing varies little according to age.On a daily basis, this practice is expressed in various forms, whether digital or handwritten: writing text messages, e-mails, shopping lists, memos, jotting down thoughts, writing words to friends...The written word, whether in paper or digital format, is part of young people's daily lives, as they memorize words or events (23%), put down their thoughts (19% do so "every day or almost every day"), send documents to their employer (17%) or write love notes (16%).Read more : Digital does not turn young people away from writing The Internet and young people: what are we afraid of?On March 5, 2024, as part of Numérique en Commun[s], ANCT's Digital Society Program teamed up with Le Monde newspaper for a conference aimed at deciphering young people's relationship with digital technology. The conference looked at the risks and opportunities that the Internet and digital technology present for young people, while questioning the balance between an overly alarmist or overly confident attitude towards these so-called "digital natives"."The negative impact of the Internet and digital technology on young people is regularly highlighted in public debate. Digital technology is accused of inducing neurodevelopmental disorders, conveying images that are inappropriate for young people and reducing interaction between parents and children, while at the same time limiting other practices that contribute to the development of young people, such as sports, outdoor activities or reading (...). "Different risks and practices" We need to distinguish between the different ways in which young people use digital technology and the Internet. (...) All those involved insist on the existence of differentiated practices within families, depending on social background and cultural capital. In this respect, children from well-off backgrounds develop digital practices that can be reinvested in their academic success, unlike children from modest backgrounds (...) ".The need to deconstruct certain discourses, without minimizing the risks" The deconstruction of certain preconceived ideas about digital technology and young people should not lead to the trivialization of certain very real risks. (...) In this context, can a balanced view of the digital world and young people be taken in the public arena, in the face of alarmist discourse or maximization of the stakes?For the speakers, it is imperative to base political discourse and public action on the scientific research available on these issues. Given the complexity of the issues raised by digital technology, they all stressed the need to strengthen links between different scientific disciplines, through interdisciplinary research programs. "Report on the Le Monde X NEC conference: Internet and young people: what are we afraid of?

ForewordThe third phase of the national strategy for artificial intelligence (AI), released a few days before the Summit, includes a major section devoted to the implementation of AI for public policy."AI will become a priority focus translated into ministerial roadmaps to be presented no later than June 2025. (...) The Ministry of Public Action, Civil Service and Simplification will coordinate interministerial actions to deploy AI in the public sector. (...) AI will be one of the priorities of the State Reform Fund"." A plan to deploy generative AI tools will enable every agent to benefit from AI assistants capable of saving them time and efficiency in their daily administrative tasks. (...) This trusted AI will always have a public agent in the loop (...) The tight steering of these deployments will enable their performance to be assessed in terms of time savings, costs and efficiency. On the basis of this evaluation and feedback, proven use cases will be deployed on a larger scale.In 2022, the Conseil d'État had laid the foundations for an AI administrative doctrine, organized around seven principles of trusted public AI.A few months later, ChatGPT burst onto the scene. The rise of generative AI is reshuffling the deck.As artificial intelligence systems (AIS) make their appearance in many areas of public action, it's time for feedback.The Conseil économique, social et environnemental (CESE), the Défenseure des droits, the Cour des comptes, the Commission de l'IA and the Direction générale de l'administration et de la fonction publique (DGAFP) all delivered their initial analyses in 2024 and early 2025: they all advocate strengthening interministerial management and clarifying a doctrine for the use of AI in public services.By emphasizing the "empowering" dimension of AI for agents, the AI Commission thus sketches out, in hollow, a doctrine of digital transformation that would be deployed "from below" : "The arrival of AI could be an opportunity to give public agents the ability to transform their own work, rather than undergoing transformation from above".The Défenseure des droits, responsible for defending the rights and freedoms of users of public services, is examining the growing use of algorithms or artificial intelligence (AI) systems in French public services, particularly in central government. Despite the "efficiency gains in decision-making ", the Défenseure des droits warns against " infringements of users' fundamental rights", and calls for human intervention to guarantee respect for users' rights.In June 2024, the DGAFP published a strategy for the use of artificial intelligence in human resources management (HRM) in the state civil service. It highlights use cases and issues guiding principles.While the Cour des Comptes recommends prioritizing "the missions and processes for which AI is likely to deliver significant gains in efficiency and productivity", it also outlines the main lines of a "robust public AI", based on sobriety in terms of data, models and infrastructures, and the ability of organizations to retain full control over them.The CESE calls on administrations to question the purposes of AI systems. To this end, it formulates two conditions for their deployment: "that they improve the quality of public service and the working conditions of the agents who contribute to it", and "that the obligations of transparency, accountability and explicability are genuinely applied, when AI systems are deployed to enforce the law, or when they lead to individual decisions producing legal, economic or social effects that affect individuals". Seven principles for "trusted public artificial intelligence" (Conseil d'État, 2022)"In August 2022, the Conseil d'État published a 360-page study on the contribution of AI to public action. The Conseil d'Etat therefore recommended that public authorities immediately define a doctrine for the use of AI: an administrative doctrine, which would make it possible to "control risks of all kinds (individual and collective)" and "guarantee the public utility of AI systems in all circumstances".The high court proposed to base the use of AI in the public sphere on seven principles:Human primacy. "Public AIS are conceived as tools at the service of human beings, which presupposes that they serve a general interest purpose and that the interference in fundamental rights and freedoms that results from their implementation is not disproportionate to the benefits expected from them".Performance. "Deterioration in the quality of a service due to automation is one of the most destructive factors for confidence in digital tools, particularly when, in the case of public services, users have no option but to turn to a competitor. Public authorities must therefore identify system performance indicators (accuracy, technical robustness, response time, etc.), and define the acceptable level of performance, taking into account the consequences of the error, while ensuring that the quality of the service provided is not adversely affected.Equity and non-discrimination. "AIS designers must choose, from among the various conceptions of fairness, the one that will guide the operation of the systems, and formalize this choice, while respecting the principle of equality. They must also take care to prevent unintentional discrimination, a particularly important issue for AIS decision support systems based on machine learning".Transparency. "This principle includes, at the very least, the right of access to the system's documentation, a requirement of loyalty consisting in informing people of the use of an AIS with regard to them, the auditability of the system by the competent authorities, and the guarantee of explicability. The technical complexity of certain AIS, in particular those based on deep learning, and the difficulty or inability to formalize the reasoning that led to the result produced, run the risk of accentuating the feeling of mistrust if the people on whom this result has an impact cannot obtain, in simple language, an explanation of the main reasons behind the decision or recommendation formulated by the system".Safety (cybersecurity). " Any AIS must integrate the issue of safety, i.e. preventing computer attacks and resolving their consequences."Environmental sustainability. "The environmental impact of AIS must be taken into account in the strategy of public AI in general, around a principle of global neutrality of AI, as in the design of each system, by comparing the extra performance enabled by higher computing power with its ecological footprint."Strategic autonomy. "Since AIS increasingly contribute to the essential functions of public power, they must be designed in such a way as to guarantee the nation's autonomy. While digital autarky would be an illusory and counter-productive objective, France must equip itself with the necessary resources, in terms of skills, infrastructure and data research structures, to reduce and choose its dependencies".However, administrations have not waited for such a doctrine to be put into practice, here and there, with varying degrees of maturity. "Above all, we note a very great heterogeneity in the maturity of administrations, the degree of progress of reflections and projects, and the scale of investments devoted to them", writes the Council. Pleading for a "proactive and lucid " strategy for the deployment of public AI, the high court invited the State to strike a balance between the development of AI for internal use and AI that directly benefits citizens, between uses dedicated to "service" and uses dedicated to "control". Giving public employees the ability to transform their own work, rather than having it transformed from above (AI Commission, 2024).The AI Commission, created in 2023, devotes a chapter of the report it submitted to the Prime Minister in March 2024, to the implementation of AI in public services. In it, she draws up a harsh assessment of the digitization of public services. " Too often, digital transformation has stopped at the dematerialization of procedures, without transforming in depth the flow of information, or the processing of requests. Promises to personalize (and therefore humanize) public services, to speed up processing and to simplify the work of agents have not been kept.For the Commission, AI is first and foremost " an opportunity to relaunch the digital transformation of public services"."Through its ease of use, generative AI offers the opportunity to unleash agents' creativity by enabling them to experiment with technology at their own level, without always needing a specific system". The Commission therefore recommends " encouraging public servants to seize these tools, all the more so when they are free for occasional use (...) The public service would benefit from equipping public servants with configurable AI so that they can deploy them themselves, whether these are off-the-shelf solutions or specific to the public service If public servants appropriate AI, uses will abound and will make it possible to identify more quickly where AI has value".By emphasizing the "empowering" dimension of AI for civil servants, the AI Commission thus sketches out a doctrine of digital transformation that would be deployed from below : "The arrival of AI could be an opportunity to give civil servants the ability to transform their own work, rather than having it transformed from above".Two pitfalls: the "big AI project" and the "all ChatGPT" approachShe warns, in passing, against two pitfalls to be avoided: " On the one hand, the 'big AI project', designed to do everything, replace everything, developed far from agents, users and the reality of public service. On the other hand, the "all ChatGPT", in which a commercial and foreign universal conversational robot would become the only use of AI in public service".Citizens themselves could be called upon to contribute to AI-enabled public services, " whether to define how they operate or to participate in their construction. Their involvement is crucial if AI-enabled transformation of public services is to avoid reinforcing bureaucratic, inexplicable and distant centralization". The Commission mentions the " alignment assemblies " convened in Taiwan to define rules for AI deployment and behavior in the public service.To give wide access to generative AI services and avoid double investment, the Commission recommends that the capacity for technical steering and execution in public services be strengthened. "At inter-ministerial level, a real technology directorate should be able to provide not only doctrine, but also quality infrastructures (hosting, computing power, software factory, digital identity etc. ), expertise and transformation budgets. At a time when the State is seeking to reinternalize skills and circulate them between ministries, it needs to strengthen its ability to produce quality digital products".Off-the-shelf AI solutions?The Commission, incidentally, sets the terms for a debate on the use of off-the-shelf AI solutions."From 2024, public services will have to decide whether to use off-the-shelf AI solutions, enter into partnerships with companies, or redevelop their own tools. (...) Off-the-shelf solutions will have the advantage of performance and simplicity, as they are immediately available, and can even be integrated directly into agents' tools (office suite, search engine). Some ministries, for example, have banned the use of IT development tools such as Github's Copilot or GPT-4."However, the Commission reminds us that off-the-shelf solutions have their limits: "either because they don't fit in with existing tools, or because they aren't adapted to certain sensitive uses. It would be tricky to ask ChatGPT to summarize a memo to a minister, for example. But it would be absurd for every ministry and local authority to redevelop or buy an AI capable of summarizing a memo without leaking the data. Human intervention as a guarantee of user rights (Défenseure des droits, 2024)In a report published on November 13, 2024, the Défenseure des droits, responsible for defending the rights and freedoms of users of public services, examines the growing use of algorithms or AI systems in French public services, particularly in central government."Despite gains in decision-making efficiency ", the Défenseure des droits warns against " infringements of users' fundamental rights".In this report, the Human Rights Defender examines the effectiveness of two guarantees that are particularly important in ensuring respect for these rights: human intervention in decision-making and control of systems, and the requirement for transparency towards users.Although user complaints are still few and far between, the Défenseure des droits has identified a"systematic" problem of trust between users and the administration. In this respect, she points out that the transparency of public action must be seen as a "prerequisite for combating possible errors, abuses and discrimination (...) However, information obligations are sometimes little or poorly respected due to the opacity of procedures carried out by or with the help of algorithms".When an administrative decision is said to be " partially automated ", a public official must take a positive, concrete and significant action based on or alongside the result generated by the algorithm, in the decision-making process. The Défenseure des droits notes, particularly on the basis of the complaints it receives, that this intervention is sometimes non-existent and sometimes inconsistent or biased, when the people involved in individual decision-making tend to endorse the results produced by the system without questioning them.In view of these limitations, and their impact on the rights of public service users, the Human Rights Defender recommends the introduction of mandatory criteria and operating procedures to define more precisely the nature of the human intervention required.Read more :The Défenseure des droits calls for vigilance regarding the use of algorithms in public services Civil service: Using AI to support rather than replace human work (DGAFP, 2024)In June 2024, the Direction Générale de l'Administration et de la Fonction Publique (DGAFP) published a strategy for the use of artificial intelligence in human resources management (HRM) in the state civil service."Although the least skilled occupations are currently the most exposed to automation, generative AI can improve the performance of less skilled workers, while advances in generative AI can increase the exposure of highly skilled occupations."The DGFAP has identified 26 cases of use of AI for HRM in the state civil service:five use cases deemed particularly "desirable": analysis of internal survey results; contextual training recommendations; personalized learning; drafting job descriptions; identification of emerging skills).four others considered "no-no's": early detection of mental health problems; analysis of relationships between colleagues; automated video interviews with candidates; recognition and reward systems.DGFAP concludes with three guiding principles:" Human control: consultation and autonomy (setting the framework for use in collaboration with employee representatives; declaration of AI use by agents; freedom of agents to use AI tools or their results) ;Protection of the agent and the administration Data protection: legal and transparent use of (private and sensitive) data; robustness and security of AI;Ethics : transparency, justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, non-discrimination." Productivity, trust, frugality: pillars of a robust public AI (Cour des Comptes, 2024)Since 2015, Bercy has deployed, on an experimental basis, no fewer than 35 artificial intelligence programs (taxation, customs controls, anti-money laundering, public statistics, consumer law...). On October 22, 2024, the Cour des Comptes published its observations on the implementation of AI at the Ministry of the Economy and Finance.The Cour des Comptes assessment is broadly in line with the employment doctrine advocated by the Conseil d'Etat. " The consideration of trust issues and environmental challenges when implementing AI systems is in the initiation phase within MEFSIN. The next step is to manage these challenges. The compatibility of these different factors - trust, environment and frugality - is a rare opportunity for the adoption of robust public AI.For the Cour des Comptes, AI systems at Bercy improve productivity in the majority of cases, but do not necessarily free up jobs. It regrets that AI is " very poorly addressed in the context of ministerial social dialogue, and project management reserves too limited a place for the quantitative and qualitative implications of AI systems for the work of the agents concerned".The Ministry of the Economy and Finance "must anticipate with greater precision the consequences of the use of AI in terms of human resources, in order to control its effects on the nature of the work entrusted to agents, retain the necessary skills and distribute the productivity gains enabled by these technologies in a relevant way."The Ministry of the Economy and Finance must also "guarantee the frugal use of AI. The concept of frugal AI argues that, over and above the ecological benefits, sobriety in terms of data, models and infrastructure promotes spending efficiency, the robustness of AI systems and the ability of organizations to retain full control over them. This approach assumes that the choice to use an AI system takes into account the costs associated with the system's entire lifecycle".In particular, the Cour des Comptes recommends :identify the ministerial body responsible for the strategic management of artificial intelligence and digital data;identify the missions and processes for which AI is likely to bring significant gains in efficiency and productivity;promote the measurement of the environmental impact of AI systems throughout their lifecycle, with a view to reducing it, among the departments of the economic and financial ministries;promote a frugal approach to the implementation of AI systems among the departments of the economic and financial ministries.Prioritize productivity issues?In another report published in January 2025, the Cour des Comptes focuses above all on productivity gains. "The situation of public finances and the necessary trade-offs between digital projects argue in favor of public administrations prioritizing artificial intelligence projects that bring tangible gains in productivity. (.. ). The various types of AI that exist are capable of delivering productivity gains, and the example of the French Ministries of Finance offers encouraging prospects in this area. As part of this dynamic, the interministerial body must ensure that AI-based digital projects enable productivity issues to be prioritized". Questioning goals to prioritize projects (CESE, 2025)On January 14, 2025, the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) published its initial conclusions on the acceptability of AI in a 224-page opinion.In a chapter more specifically devoted to AI deployment in public services, the EESC reviews a number of AI systems deployed in public services.According to the CESE, integrating AI requires administrations to consider a series of questions: "Why is this modernization essential: to improve service quality? to cut costs? to reduce the number of public-sector employees? By questioning the aims of the transformation, this makes it possible to prioritize the most transformative projects, taking into account ethical criteria and the principles inherent in public service".In conclusion, the EESC calls for AI systems to be deployed, but on two conditions:"that they improve the quality of the public service and the working conditions of the employees who contribute to it";"that the obligations of transparency, accountability and explicability are truly applied, when AI systems are deployed to enforce the law (for example, to calculate the amount of a tax), when they prove to be unavoidable (following the example of Parcoursup) or when they lead to individual decisions producing legal, economic or social effects that affect people".In line with its previous opinions, the EESC recommends :"systematically offer support and a human touch as an alternative to paperless services, as is the case with the France Service centers. enshrine in law the principle of a right to non-digital services, and guarantee equal access and freedom of choice for everyone.Read more : CESE: Questioning purposes to prioritize AI projects in public services

ForewordSome twenty artificial intelligence (AI) projects run by local authorities had been identified by 2022, and over fifty by 2023. By the end of 2024, they will probably number in the hundreds. 36% of local authorities surveyed say they have already implemented and tested an artificial intelligence system (AIS), and 15% plan to do so in the next twelve months (15%). This acceleration is largely due to the multiplication of projects based on generative AI, notably for the deployment of conversational robots designed for both agents and users.Some local authorities are starting to involve citizens in the development of an AI doctrine or strategy.Anxious to make AI a subject for public debate before any widespread deployment, the Interconnectés with France Urbaine and Intercommunalités de France launched a call on September 18 for the organization of territorial AI consultations.On the occasion of the "Territorial frugal AI demonstrators" calls for projects, the Ministry of Ecological Transition, for its part, has undertaken to bring about the emergence of a Community of AI Actors in the territories. The breakthrough of generative AI in local authoritiesOn November 12, 2024, the Data Publica observatory published its third barometer on the use of data by territories, with a particular focus this year on the use of AI.The Barometer records a clear acceleration in the number of AI usage projects within French local authorities: more than one in two local authorities surveyed (51%) say they have either already implemented or tested an AIS (36%), or intend to do so in the next twelve months (15%). In 2022, the figure was 21%.The highest percentages are found in the regions (75% have already launched projects for 2024) and metropolitan areas (62%). For the first time, a significant number of municipalities with populations of 3,500 to 10,000 are involved (14% have launched projects, compared with none in the 2023 survey).Of the projects already underway in 2024, 29% concern administrative management and 11% customer relations. These projects alone account for 40% of the total, and could even represent 56% of new projects by 2025.So there are probably several hundred projects underway. "These figures can be explained very directly by the multiplication of projects involving the use of generative AI. In particular, there are a great many chatbots or "conversational robots" being imagined or tested by local authorities of all sizes, both internally (to respond to agents who need information about their careers, for example) and externally (to provide information to users)." In 2024, 52% of communities that used AI used generative AI."Easy to access, at least to carry out tests and take the first steps, generative AI is very logically the system that is making the most progress in 2024 in pioneering local authorities, with 52% in use. This is even truer for uses linked to administrative management: 74% of local authorities that use or intend to use AI for internal purposes say they will be using generative AI"."Modeling tools, which make forecasts and can be used to steer certain urban functions, are probably the tools that best meet the needs of local public players. These AIS, which have existed for many years, could spread more rapidly in the years to come ".Lack of skills, the main obstacle to AI implementationThe main obstacle to the use of AI in local authorities is the lack of skills, mentioned by 63% of local authorities and 67% of regions, but only 38% of metropolises. The Barometer also highlights a lack of confidence in AIS (47%). Although this figure is lower among local authorities that have taken the first step, it remains high (38%). Even more sensitive is the issue of access to the necessary (and quality) data, which is only ranked 6th among obstacles by all local authorities, but rises to 3rd place (38% among those who have undertaken the first tests). A community of AI players in the Territories for the ecological transitionAs part of its "AI and ecological transition" roadmap, the French Ministry of Ecological Transition has been supporting frugal AI-based solutions for territories since 2022.The " Démonstrateurs d'AI frugale des territoires " (DIAT) call for projects targeted AI projects capable of making predictions and recommendations to aid decision-making. " AI solutions must be frugal in terms of data and energy, and their own environmental impact must be measured, which must be thought out upstream of project construction ".12 projects were selected for this call for projects. The Banque des Territoires, operator of the call for projects, distinguishes three approaches to frugality among the selected projects:Minimize data collection, aiming for quality rather than quantity, and ensuring that only the data needed for the purpose is updated. This was notably the case with the IA.rbre project, which uses AI to help the Lyon metropolitan area detect "plantable" areas and use vegetation to create cooling zones or combat runoff phenomena.Limiting the number of sensors: frugality can also be achieved by exploiting data that are not originally environmental data. Through the Predict AI'r project run by the Paris-Ouest La Défense public institution, the consortium will be exploiting cell phone boundary data to deduce, using AI, users' travel patterns and their impact on air quality. A strategy that could make it possible to avoid multiplying the number of air sensors, while at the same time being applicable to any territory, in France or anywhere else in the world.Frugality can also be measured by the positive externalities that AI generates in organizations. In Saclay, for example, the Urba (IA) project supported by the agglomeration community promises to help local authorities in the Paris region revise their local urban planning schemes (PLU) by integrating all normative constraints in terms of environmental protection, whether regional or national.These calls for projects have enabled the Ministry of Ecological Transition to bring together a Community of AI Actors in Territories (CAIAT) made up of representatives from territories, competitiveness clusters, research institutions, startups and companies. Public consultations and citizen conventions on AISeveral local authorities have undertaken to involve citizens in the development of a doctrine or strategy around artificial intelligence.In October 2024, the City of Paris sought the opinion of its residents on their perceptions of artificial intelligence and its application on Parisian territory. This digital consultation concluded with a day dedicated to AI on January 25, 2025.Nantes Métropole had already adopted an AI doctrine, which stipulates that AI can only be used within a predefined framework, evolving through a "compass". While testing this doctrine throughout 2024, as part of internal experimentation with use cases applied to various professions and public policy needs, the metropolis organized a series of events around this "compass" throughout 2024. This "Nantes Débat de l'IA" process will culminate in the revision, during 2025, of the metropolitan charter, which will become the "Charte métropolitaine donnée et de l'IA".Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole, for its part, organized a Citizens' Convention from November 2023 to February 2024 on " What artificial intelligence to serve residents and the territory? ". "This participatory process and the Opinion issued by the Citizens' Convention have "strengthened the legitimacy and effectiveness of this approach, drawing on the work and thoughts of the residents involved". "Making AI a subject of public debate before any widespread deployment"On September 18, Les Interconnectés, France Urbaine and Intercommunalités de France launched a call for the organization of territorial AI consultations."For elected representatives, agents, users, citizens, economic players and academics, keen to understand and control the potential uses of these AI systems and their impacts, these regional consultations will enable them to debate the conditions for their deployment and to raise expectations, points of vigilance and proposals on a regional scale".In recent months, Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole, Rennes and Nantes Métropole have led the way in organizing consultations and debates with local staff and stakeholders on the issue of artificial intelligence (AI) and how local authorities should embrace it."What opportunities do these technologies open up? Under what conditions are these solutions deployed ? How can we guarantee ? What are the commitments in terms of energy sobriety? ? What guarantees can be given regarding the organization of people's work? ? What impact will this have on public services? Discussing these questions with users, employees, economic players and local civil society will be an opportunity to integrate the uniqueness of each territory and explore how social, environmental and ethical criteria - in a sense, responsible criteria - can be collectively defined and influence the strategic orientations of public players".The results of these initiatives will feed into the production of a manifesto that will affirm the political doctrine of AI at the service of local authorities.The first territories already committed to this approach: Nantes Métropole, Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole, Rennes Ville et Métropole, Toulouse Métropole, Métropole de Nice Côte d'Azur, Tours Métropole Val de Loire, Ville et métropole du Grand Nancy, Angers Loire Métropole, la Communauté de Communes de Lacq-Orthez, l'agglomération du SICOVAL, Bordeaux Métropole, Quimperlé Communauté, Paris Saclay, la Métropole Rouen Normandie, Communauté d'Agglomération de Béthune-Bruay Artois Lys Roman Intercommunalités de France: don't rush the widespread use of AGI in public services"The risks and limitations associated with the use of AI, such as frequent errors and biases in the data that AI compiles, raise concerns about the reliability and fairness of automated decisions. In addition, the consequences for the professions of public agents and the need for adequate training will have to be taken into account."Intercommunalités de France calls for the widespread use of AGI in public services not to be rushed:First, we need to learn from current experiments at both national and local levels;establish an ethical, legal and transparent framework for the use of AI, as well as guarantees to preserve the human link in public service.Intercommunalités de France proposes :rigorous upstream evaluation of the tool using generative AI, the implementation of regulatory methods and the promotion of a local public debate on AI ;to develop "chosen" rather than "submissive" AI, elected representatives are calling for concerted action between the State and local authorities to define an appropriate framework for use;the question of education in digital culture and the use of these new digital tools is a cause for concern, and local staff will need to be trained to cope with this technological evolution.