The Conseil d'État, France's highest administrative court, has pooh-poohed the idea that artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to humanity, while reassuring the public that they themselves are not secretly killer robots. Rapporteur and State Counsel Alexandre Lallet said: "We're not at the point which some call the'singularity,' when machines take control and humans get forced into their service, like in some American blockbusters or works of science fiction. French President Emmanuel Macron looks through a microscope during a visit on the topic of artificial intelligence at the Institut Curie Hospital in 2018 in Paris, France Pool photo by Benoit Tessier/AFP via Getty Images "All the scientists that we talked to think that [singularity] is a fantasy, pure and simple, and it amounts to mere marketing," Tuot continued, "We can confirm the revelation that none of us are, in fact, robots." Renaud Vedel, who was in the working group as France's top AI coordinator and is now Digital Affairs Minister Jean-Noël Barrot's cabinet director, said in an interview in May that the argument had been put to rest, "The debate was a bit too focused on the singularity and those kinds of things, but that's over now, thankfully." PARIS -- The Conseil d'État, France's highest administrative court, has pooh-poohed the idea that artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to humanity, while reassuring the public that they themselves are not secretly killer robots. Rapporteur and State Counsel Alexandre Lallet said: "We're not at the point which some call the'singularity,' when machines take control and humans get forced into their service, like in some American blockbusters or works of science fiction.

PARIS -- The Conseil d'État, France's highest administrative court, has pooh-poohed the idea that artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to humanity, while reassuring the public that they themselves are not secretly killer robots. The Conseil d'État provides administrative guidance to the government and was commissioned by then-Prime Minister Jean Castex in June last year to advise on how to develop the use of artificial intelligence in public administration and mitigate its risks. The report, released on Tuesday, is scathing about what it calls the myth of "singularity," where technology outsmarts and controls humanity. The court called on the government to counter this "fantasy" in its AI strategy, saying that "reflection on artificial intelligence is often the victim of parasitic, excessive concentration on artificial general intelligence." Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is a name for the theory that AI could surpass human intelligence.