Scientific and technological progress regularly makes media headlines, as can be seen, for example, from the many articles on advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly since the launch of the famous ChatGPT in late 2022. And yet, with only anecdotal material on how a chatbot like ChatGPT can be used and no challenging coverage of the questions raised by its uses in everyday life, are individuals really well-informed — informed enough — about this new technology of AI? Do they have a clear, precise vision enabling them to take a view of the many major issues it raises? The same applies in the field of genetics: do we know precisely what point research has reached and what potential applications might ensue in the coming years (including thanks to AI)?
In these two scientific fields with major implications for our future, we are admittedly informed — as we are in many other areas — though at times in only a fragmentary, incomplete way and with little awareness of a number of precautions that happen to be essential. Given common misconceptions, and in an effort to put individuals at ease with a science they are at times inclined to distrust, it is essential to provide them with precise keys to understanding, to tell them what is known (or not) about developing technologies and to lay out the issues and limitations for them in as educative a way as possible. If that is done, they will be equipped with an informed, rather than a mystified, sense of the societal issues around these technologies. In this article, researchers Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo and Laurence Devillers explore these issues of public information through examples of the advances in genetics and AI, and offer pathways for ‘better equipping the general public to deal with scientific and technological progress.’
