On the ethics of algorithms and artificial intelligence.

Summary One of the major societal challenges of digital technology during the digital metamorphosis of our societies and economies over the last twenty-five years has been the issue of personal data and respect for privacy, which has led in Europe to the development of the GRDP, a new European regulation that will come into force in May 2018, to which the various economic players must submit, sometimes by adapting their digital strategy in depth. The issue of respecting personal data in a digital society has thus advanced to the regulatory stage. More recently, a new issue has emerged: the ethics, accountability and transparency of algorithms in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Our lives and days are indeed more and more dependent on algorithms: waking up in the morning at an optimal time thanks to a connected object, travelling to the workplace via an algorithm minimizing the transport time (like Waze or RATP), Internet search engine (Google, Bing, Qwant), text translation (Google translation), buying products on an e-commerce site (like Amazon), recommending a restaurant (like La fourchette), using Uber to go there, Trip Advisor and its recommendations to prepare one's vacations, booking flights via Orbitz or Expedia optimizing the answers according to different criteria (low price, direct flights, etc.), booking accommodation via AirBus, the most popular airline in Europe.), booking accommodation via AirBnB, recommending physical activity via a connected watch, or a movie for the evening with Netflix, and we could mention many others, touching on more sensitive subjects such as health (predictive algorithms giving a probability of having such or such pathology). The issue of the ethics of algorithms is all the more important today as the integration of AI in consumer products and services is exploding in all economic sectors.