A l'UM la science [S04-ep07]: Artificial intelligence at the service of debate
This week in A l'UM la science, Mathieu Lafourcade, researcher at the Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics and Microelectronics (Lirmm), talks about the Aren digital debate platform. Benoit Ildefonse, Director of the Montpellier Geosciences Montpellier (GM) will present Voyage en géosciencesa round table organized by Oreme and GM at La Panacée on November 12, 2024. A program broadcast every Wednesday at 6pm on Divergence FM 93.9.
Debate is apparently a French passion. In any case, it's an essential element of a vibrant, healthy democracy. In a representative system like ours, its most powerful incarnation is the National Assembly. But how much space is given to direct debate, to citizen debate? Local consultations, whether in villages, conurbations or metropolises, are often criticized for leaving so few decisions to the collective. More often than not, it's a matter of choosing the color of the streetlight rather than discussing its usefulness.
Yet the desire is there, as evidenced by the success of the Gand débat national launched by Emmanuel Macron in 2019 in the midst of the gilets jaunes movement. 10,000 meetings organized all over France, 16,000 cahiers de doléances opened and nearly 2 million contributions recorded on the website. So many resources dispensed for nothing or so little.
So how can we re-emerge this possibility of an agora on the scale of a city, a country, or an association, without being directly dependent on politics? Thanks to artificial intelligence, perhaps. At Lirmm, Montpellier's computer science, robotics and microelectronics laboratory, researchers have been working for several years on a debate platform based on automatic language processing technology.
Since 2016 they have teamed up with Lirdef, the interdisciplinary research laboratory in didactics, education and training, to make this platform available to middle and high school students with the aim of developing their argumentative skills and critical thinking. This project, first called Aren and then Aren Dia, will be completed in 2025. The platform is also available to local authorities and associations to support debate.
So what does this platform look like? How does this automatic language processing technology work? What does AI have to do with it? And of course, what is its added value in the emergence of new agora? We talk to Mathieu Lafourcade, researcher at Lirmm and co-project leader with Manuel Bachtold from Lirdef.
To find out more :
- Read the article Collaborative machine learning device for debate practice
- Visit the AREN platform
Finally, our last-minute guest will be Benoit Ildefonse, Director of the Géosciences Montpellier laboratory, who will present Voyage en géosciences, a round table organized by Oreme and Géosciences Montpellier on the theme "From habitable planet to critical mineral resources". The event takes place at La Panacée on November 12, 2024.
At UM la science you've got the program, here we go!
Coproduction: Divergence FM / Université de Montpellier
Animation: Lucie Lecherbonnier
Interviews : Lucie Lecherbonnier / Aline Périault
Production : Tom Chevalier
Listen to the program "A l'UM la science" on Divergence FM 93.9
