WHERE I'M COMING FROM

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I discovered the internet at university in France and immediately understood its power: not as technology, but as a bridge connecting people and democratising information. In my early professional work, I used CD-ROMs and digital platforms to share workplace agreements, safety interpretations, and best practices. Later, I implemented ERP systems that transformed organisational governance and stakeholder management. Each technological wave (email, mobile, cloud) changed not just our tools, but how we work and relate to each other. Fascinating, but also unsettling.

Philosopher Éric Sadin helped me see what I was sensing: technology doesn't just change what we do, it reshapes our social fabric, our attention, our capacity for deep thought and genuine connection. As algorithms increasingly mediate our decisions and relationships, what happens to deliberation, nuance, and the democratic values that hold societies together?

My career (industrial relations in France, hospitality in Australia, technology implementation across sectors) has been guided by humanist principles: that transformation succeeds or fails based on human dignity, that progress must serve collective wellbeing, not just efficiency. With AI, we face the most profound change yet. And this time, we need to get it right.

WHAT I'M SEEING: AI'S UNPRECEDENTED IMPACT

AI isn't just another technology upgrade. We're moving rapidly towards artificial general intelligence (AGI) and agentic AI systems that act autonomously and fundamentally reshape our relationship with work, identity, and each other. This isn't about job displacement alone. It's about the philosophical and sociological foundations of work itself. For millennia, work has been central to human meaning and social cohesion. What happens when that relationship fundamentally changes?

I'm watching organisations race to deploy AI without grasping these implications. Agentic systems making decisions, mediating relationships, shaping how we learn and create. Yet we're implementing them faster than we can understand their impact on human dignity, democratic accountability, and the values holding societies together.

When algorithms increasingly mediate our creativity, relationships, and decisions, we risk losing what makes us distinctly human: our capacity to create lasting meaning, to act freely, to choose genuinely rather than follow algorithmic suggestions.

I see extraordinary potential: democratised expertise, liberation from repetitive tasks, solutions to complex challenges. But also a dangerous gap between technological capability and ethical governance, between deployment speed and collective wisdom. We're at a critical juncture. We must establish clear rules and guidance, and consciously shape this transformation rather than simply react to it.