technology – World Radio Paris

Are We Headed Towards a Takeover of AI in French Education ?

2 October 2025 by Tarek Diouri--Adequin

As we reached September, France had the Rentrée, its big “Back to School” moment last month. School is normally an important step for millions of students, developing their own mental capacities and personal knowledge throughout their youth.

They resolve problems, analyze data, learn the history of humanity, discover ways to put their own thoughts into form… but over the past few years, some students have given up on doing those tasks by themselves: they let AI take care of everything.

Artificial intelligence has already taken over many aspects of our daily lives; education couldn’t escape it either. With 74% of people aged 18 to 24 using those systems, according to a poll conducted by Ipsos, and 82% of students having used generative AI at least once – 68% of them using it at least once or twice every week – according to a questionnaire from the French Ministry of Higher Education, there’s a clear turnaround in the way young people throughout the country go through their educational journey.

Working faster, not smarter

While artificial intelligence could be much-needed help for students who struggle with comprehension or the difficulty of an exercise, it’s also a way for students looking to cut corners to solicit those intelligent systems and get them to do their homework quickly.

Data provided by OpenRouter showed ChatGPT usage averaged about 80 billion requests in May and hit its peak on May 27, when users generated over 90 billion requests.

The number of requests plummeted during the summer and has picked up since September, reaching a peak of just over 86 billion requests on September 30.

Those days are not random: they match the rhythm of students, who tend to have their final tests by May and go back to school in September.

Though OpenRouter analyzes worldwide data, you simply have to look at the Baccalaureat, the French high school final exam, and its cheating data for the past years to get a local insight. In 2024, 5% of cheaters had used “artificial intelligence” to do their work, according to the Ministry of Higher Education.

Teaching AI

With the number of AI uses trending upwards, putting a full stop to the technology seems like a lost cause. In that case, it might be worth looking at it from another angle.

“There are good things about AI. If you go back to 3 years ago, when you had a course you didn’t understand, you had to do so much research,” Evann Hislers, student at SciencesPo and author of the “L’IA pour les Étudiants (AI for Students)” guide, explains. “Now I can just ask ChatGPT and learn something very easily in two or three minutes. […] There are people who use AI the right way. They don’t see it as a production tool but as a helpful companion.”

Evann’s perspective is shared by Deborah Elalouf, president of the Tralalere company which oversees Internet Sans Crainte (Internet Without Fear), the national digital education program for the youth and their families.

Thanks to feedback from the various operations created by the program, including the Safer Internet Day initiative during which Internet Sans Crainte gets to take on the technologies of the future with students, teachers and parents, she has realized the youth also acknowledges that lack of information surrounding the use of AI.

“It’s important to learn how to use [those tools] and how to question them, in the way that uses our brains and does not create cognitive holes,” Deborah explains. “[Young people] really ask for support and help. It’s not just telling them “[AI]’s dangerous” or “It’s fantastic”. They asked us for tips on how to use it in a smart way, and how to dompt our AIs.”Elisabeth Borne, the French Minister of Education, has acknowledged this need to educate students on the ways to use AI and the way it reshapes the learning experience. An overhaul of the education system, geared towards artificial intelligence, might be needed in the coming years.

🎧 Listen to the latest episode of the High-Tech Intermission available on the World Radio Paris website. It is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other podcast platforms.

Discover The World Through AI with An Exhibition at the Jeu de Paume in Paris

12 August 2025 by Tarek Diouri--Adequin

Culture, Events, General

art, exhibition, paris, technology

To better understand the future of artificial intelligence, you must have a grasp on its history. The World Through AI exhibition, taking place at the Jeu de Paume until September 21, provides you with this retrospective through art.

The World Through AI gives 30 artists a space for creation related to those intelligent systems, present in our everyday lives. They express their thoughts on artificial intelligence, covering diverse themes – ethical, cultural, politico-social, ecological and so on – and using a wide array of media such as sculptures, paintings, audio and video recordings… some of which were also created with the assistance of AI.

The show opens with tangible art in a physical space, showing us the material cost of the seemingly intangible AI systems; the very first pieces you will see as you enter the exhibition are sculptures that appear to be rocks. Metamorphism LI, Julian Charrière’s sculptures, are more than that: they are made of artificial lava and melted electronic waste you find in the devices running AI systems.

*Close-up of a sample of “Metamorphism LI”, Julian Charrière’s sculptures present all throughout the first section of the exhibition*

“We wanted to stress the fact that AI is not at all dematerialized technology”, Ada Ackerman, co-curator of the exhibition, said of the “mineralogical cabinet” used to open the exhibition. “We wanted to make the visitors aware that these technologies are very energy-consuming. Not everyone is aware that a simple request from ChatGPT requires [multiple] glasses of water.”

The exhibition balances on a tightrope of art and commentary, sometimes mocking AI for taking items at face-value (Trevor Paglen, The Treachery of Object Recognition), exposing viewers to the silent horrors of the “ghost workers” of the Global South (Meta Office, Behind the Screens of Amazon Mechanical Turks), or inviting visitors to become part of the art themselves.

One of Ada Ackerman’s favorite works in the exhibition, Hito Steyerl’s Mechanical Kurds installation, is one of the latter. “For me, this is also a metaphor of how, with AI today, all words become taggable objects”, she explains. “The people sitting in the benches [of the installation] also become objects to tag. I think it’s a good metaphor of how AI is changing our relationship and our perception of the world.”

The curator believes the latest developments of AI are “a major anthropological and cultural shift” for today’s society. She believes the exhibition is to be treated as an opening point for conversation and an attempt at better understanding artificial intelligence.

🎧 Listen to our entire interview with Ada Ackerman in the full episode of the High-Tech Intermission available on the World Radio Paris website. It is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other DSPs.

📌 Check out the “The World Through AI” as well. The exhibition will remain available at the Jeu de Paume until September 21, 2025.