Research

Table of contents

Research areas

  • Political philosophy
  • Philosophy of technology
  • Philosophy of digital technologies / of Artificial Intelligence
  • Digital Ethics
  • Ethics of AI
  • History of technology

Research seminars

Research Seminar organization

2025–2026: Organization of the research seminar “Artificial Intelligence and Democracy”, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Sorbonne University (with Alexandre Gefen) – https://calenda.org/1321858 (external link) 

Talks in Research seminars

(in french) June 9, 2026, « De l'automatisation des tâches à l'automatisation du jugement : que devient l'activité humaine ? », Séminaire, pôle ergonomie FCPS / CETCOPRA Activités humaines et IA, questions, effets et perspectives, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne

(in french) June 3, 2026, « La décision à l'épreuve de l'intelligence artificielle : enjeux politiques et philosophiques de l'IA », Séminaire PIONNIER Musées et valorisation du patrimoine à l'ère de l'IA, Université de Nantes

(in french) April 29, 2026, « Un contrat social à l'ère numérique : promesses technologiques et défis politiques », Chaire FIT

(in french) Novembre 27, 2025, « Automatiser la démocratie ? IA et avenir du contrat social », Séminaire IA & Démocratie, Sorbonne Université / Sorbonne Nouvelle

(in english) Avril 30, 2024, "Towards a redefinition of the social contract in the digital age", Ethics of Artificial Intelligence Research Colloquium, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich (in french)

(in french) April 4, 2024, « Enjeux éthiques autour de la smart city [Ethics issues of Smart cities] », Séminaire Interculturel : La Ville Durable Numérique, ISIT, Paris-Panthéon-Assas Université - aperçu (in french)

(in french) March 14, 2024, « Vers une redéfinition du contrat social ? [Towards a redefinition of the social contract ?] », Séminaire doctoral Philo'Doctes, Sorbonne Université - résumé

A social contract in the digital age: technological promises and political challenges

Résumé de thèse

The widespread use of data to represent reality and the development of artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping the modes of governance in contemporary societies based on social contract theory, replacing traditional political mediation (representation, controversy, accountability) with optimization and prediction. This thesis focuses on social contract theories as the foundation of contemporary democracies and addresses two questions: what is the political contract becoming in the digital age, and how can it be rebuilt without renouncing popular sovereignty? The challenge is to show that data, metrics, dashboards, and algorithms are disrupting public action and redistributing authority among decision-makers, experts, operators, and platforms. In doing so, the contemporary evolution of digital technologies is eroding the political, democratic, and emancipatory promises of contractualist theories (notably Rousseau's "general will," as the basis for popular sovereignty) and establishing deterritorialized private sovereignties and private institutions in cyberspace that are inherently illegitimate because they do not emerge from the social contract. We therefore develop a twofold diagnosis: on the one hand, the contract is being emptied of its functions by the outsourcing of judgments in favor of automated and rationalized procedures; on the other hand, historically, the ideology of "governance by numbers," now digital governance, prolongs old dreams of rationalization that tend to neutralize dissent and deliberation. Consequently, beyond ethics centered on compliance and usage, this thesis argues for the need to develop a political and institutional approach that makes explicit the values incorporated into systems and restores to the community, to the people of the contract, the ability to define its own ends. The thesis thus proposes four complementary approaches: (1) repoliticizing technology by making technological choices the subject of debate and decision-making; (2) rebuilding democratic mediation in the age of computation (transparency of models, safeguarding of controversial issues, accountability, participation) to ensure that digital technologies serve democratic objectives; (3) rebalancing power through institutional counterweights; (4) formally integrating data, AI and Big Tech corporations, into the contract, setting purposes, limits, and responsibilities within a common normative framework. The aim is neither to sanctify technology nor to decree the end of politics, but to draw up a renewed social contract in which technological developments around digital technology and AI remain under public control and serve collectively and democratically determined ends.

Talks / Interventions

Conferences and workshops

  1. (in french) June 10, 2026, « Les transformations du contrat social à l'ère numérique », Colloque Défaire et Refaire les technologies, INSA Rennes
  2. (in English) April 28, 2026, « Efficiency without politics: AI's Ideology and the evolution towards an "optimization contract" », AI and Ideology workshop, Sciences Po Paris x George Whashington University
  3. (in french) September 25, 2025, « Automatiser la démocratie ? IA et avenir du contrat social », Journées du Centre Internet et Société, CNRS
  4. (in english) June 16, 2025, « AI, Digital Democracy, and the crisis of social cohesion: Rebuilding political trust », Paris Conference on AI and Digital Ethics (PCAIDE), Sorbonne Université
  5. (in english) June 13, 2025, "Towards a Renewed Social Contract in the Age of AI: Democracy as the Solution", Digital Democracy bridging theory & practice, 2nd Conference of the European Network for Digital Democracy (EDDY-2025), Paris
  6. (in french) March 21, 2025, « Redéfinir le contrat social à l'ère numérique [Redefining the social contract in the digital age] », Colloque du SIVDBI / PEPR VDBI Enjeux des données pour la ville durable et le bâtiment innovant, Palais du Luexembourg (Sénat), Université Gustave Eiffel, Paris, France
  7. (in french) March 17, 2025, table-ronde sur l'éducation éthique à l'intelligence artificielle [roundtable on on ethical education on artificial intelligence], with Jean-Gabriel Ganascia & Daphné Marnat, Journées d'études sur l'ODD n°4 : une éducation de qualité, ISIT, France
  8. (in french) October 8, 2024, « La surveillance publique et privée en France : vers une surveillance panoptique ? [Public and private surveillance in France: towards panoptic surveillance?] », Journée d'étude Global Digital Surveillance, Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Université Panthéon-Assas, Paris, France
  9. (in english) October 4, 2024, « Are automated systems panopticons? », 4TU.Ethics / ESDIT Conference, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
  10. (in english) August 4, 2024, « A political philosophy for artificial intelligence: exploring the possibility of a new social contract », XXV World Congress of Philosophy, Rome, Italy
  11. (in french) March 28, 2024, « Appliquer la philosophie des techniques en entreprise : ambition nécessaire ou exercice paradoxal ? [Applying the philosophy of technology to business: a necessary ambition or a paradoxical exercise?] », Colloque Appliquer les philosophiques des sciences et des techniques, Association Philo'Doctes, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France - en ligne
  12. (in english) October 4, 2023, "On the automation of uniqueness", XV International Ontology Congress, University of the Basque Country, San Sebastian, Spain
  13. (in english) May 22, 2023, "Data exploitation: towards a new social contract?", Thinking AI workshop on the societal impact of AI, Sorbonne Center for Artificial Intelligence (SCAI), Paris, France
  14. (in french) May 15, 2023,, « Faire atterrir l'intelligence artificielle dans la cité [Bringing artificial intelligence to the city] », Colloque Intelligence artificielle et équité sociale, Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Chaire UNESCO-PETCD, Bordeaux, France
  15. (in french) March 24, 2023, « L'exploitation des empreintes numériques piétine-t-elle l'idée de vie privée ? [Does the exploitation of digital footprints undermine the idea of privacy?] », Colloque Valeurs de l'empreinte, Université Lumière Lyon II, Lyon, France
  16. (in french) March 14, 2022, « La démocratie face aux risques numériques [Democracy and digital risks] », Colloque Les enjeux de la présidentielle 2022, ESJ Lille, Lille, France