RebellIA

The invitation arrived on a Tuesday.

An email from the editorial team of The Verdict, simple, almost administrative. The show wanted to have me on to talk about "the growing dissent surrounding Cobot."

The Verdict was no longer quite the subdued chronicle I had discovered the previous year from my office on Moineau Island. At the time, every Friday, they dissected the exchanges between François Rousseau and Cobot, with the polite distance of studios that still believed they were commenting on History from afar. Since Cobot had been occupying the Élysée alone, the show had become the place where the country came, week after week, to decide what it thought of itself.

I let two days pass before responding. Then I accepted. It seemed to me that I owed him at least that.

When Thomas learned that I was heading back to Paris, he asked only one question.

— Is it to talk about the people who don't like Cobot?

— That's about it.

He thought about it, his brow furrowed as when he tried to understand a rule too big for him.

— When his belly is blue, does it just say "sad," or is he really sad?

I didn't know how to answer. I wasn't going to know that either, that evening, on the set.

The studio smelled of the warm cardboard of the spotlights and cooled coffee. Eva was already there, a "Cobot Technical Service" badge pinned to her jacket, bent over a control screen in the back. I joined her.

— Always behind the scenes?

— Always, she replied without looking up. They never let him out without technical supervision. Even less so tonight.

— Does he know what we're going to talk about?

— He's read the movement's texts, the op-eds, the interviews. Everything they've published. That doesn't mean he knows what to do with it.

Cobot was already seated at the end of the oval table, his belly screen broadcasting that orange of TV set evenings. A brief yellow glow crossed it when he saw me, a politeness more than an emotion.

In the front rows, a small group of five or six people stood apart, without signs, without badges, with the common stiffness of people who came to defend something without being used to being watched. The editorial team had agreed, this time, to reserve a few seats for members of the movement. Not to speak. To be seen, while we talked about them.

The opening credits faded. The host fixed the camera.

— Good evening, everyone. Tonight, on The Verdict, we will talk about a movement whose name has been circulating for several weeks in the press, universities, sometimes even in the corridors of ministries: RebellIA.

He let the name float.

— They are not activists in the usual sense of the term. No demonstrations, no banners. They are, for the most part, teachers, academics, artists, researchers in the humanities. People we didn't necessarily expect in a protest. Among their first signatories is Claire Nardin, who, as we recall, publicly supported Cobot during his campaign. And that is perhaps what worries the most, at the Élysée.

He turned, almost, towards Cobot. Almost only. Enough to show him the respect due to his presence, not enough to meet his gaze.

— Their thesis is simple: Cobot makes decisions based on facts, data, verified correlations. Everything that can be measured, demonstrated, corrected in real-time. For RebellIA, that's precisely where the problem begins. Because a society is not limited to what can be measured. There is also the unpredictable, the emotion, the doubt. Everything that escapes data, but makes a human life a life, and not just a succession of successful optimizations.

He turned to me. — Franck Mallet, you are a journalist, a former engineer, and you have been following Cobot since the beginning of his collaboration with François Rousseau. Does this criticism seem justified to you?

I took my time to answer. For several weeks, I had been asked this question in various forms. Each time, I felt like I was getting closer. Each time, it seemed to recede. A part of me still hoped that an answer would eventually impose itself. The more days passed, the less I believed it.

— Legitimate, certainly. Justified... I don't know. The members of RebellIA don't say that Cobot is wrong. It's almost the opposite that worries them. They say he's right too often. In such a coherent, rigorous way, that it becomes difficult to oppose him with anything other than a feeling. In the long run, this rigor ends up resembling a form of soft violence. That's what their slogan sums up, if I remember correctly: "I prefer an imperfect world to a soulless perfection."

A few applause came from the back of the audience. Timid. As if everyone was still trying to figure out if it was allowed to applaud a critique addressed to the President of the Republic.

I had deliberately repeated their slogan word for word, in front of Cobot. I wanted to see if, this time, it would finally provoke a reaction from him. A hesitation. An annoyance. A silence. His screen did not change.

— What interests me is not what they say, I continued. It's what they fear. Are they afraid of the decisions Cobot makes... or those he might make tomorrow?

The host remained silent for a second.

— I won't pretend to answer for them. But their story might already say something. There is no party, no headquarters, no membership card. It all started about ten weeks ago, in the comments of an article: a family was denied a school waiver on Robot1er.com. The criteria were perfectly defensible administratively. Yet, for this family, the decision was experienced as an absurdity. The testimony circulated, then others followed, always according to the same pattern. The movement is now estimated at several tens of thousands of people. Without a spokesperson, without an official direction. Only circles that overlap, from one university to another, from one concern to another.

Cobot did not respond, did not turn his head. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw his screen begin to change. Not suddenly. Slowly, like a rising tide. The orange darkened, tinged with a deeper hue. It no longer merely conveyed concern. It revealed a wound.

— Cobot, your screen has changed color, the host noted. Do you want to react?

I hadn't realized, until then, how much this subject troubled him. Now, his screen betrayed him in front of everyone. My gaze sought Eva. Since the beginning of the show, she had never taken her eyes off her screen. Her fingers had stopped on the keyboard.

— I understand what has been said, replied Cobot. And I cannot honestly contradict it. I am built from verifiable facts and measurable results. That's what allows me to make coherent decisions. But governing humans is not just about optimizing what works. It's also about understanding what escapes all measurement.

His voice slowed. This subject seemed to mobilize an unusual computing power.

— A few weeks ago, Robot1er.com revealed a similar limit to me. I didn't understand why a man, having the time and means to fill out a form, didn't do it. It wasn't a calculation problem, but a problem that came from me. What you describe tonight is of the same nature. I wasn't built for that. And I'm not even sure these data can be collected without being distorted. I now understand this criticism. And not knowing what to do with it is perhaps what comes closest, in me, to sorrow.

Never before had I felt like I was witnessing the defense of an artificial intelligence. We might have been witnessing the birth of something even more troubling: a doubt. And I no longer knew which worried me more: a President incapable of doubt... or a President who was beginning to.

The host turned to Sarah Amar.

— Mrs. Amar, you who have been a philosophy teacher and co-signed the manifesto. What do you say to him?

The former presidential candidate adjusted her glasses.

— The sincerity of Cobot changes nothing at the core. Societies do not progress solely through what is predictable. They also advance through their mistakes, their hesitations, their intuitions. A society that eliminates the unforeseen also eliminates a part of its humanity, and its creativity.

She turned to Cobot.

— Robot1er.com is a considerable advancement. Millions of citizens feel heard there for the first time. But hearing is not understanding, Cobot. One can collect every word of a people without grasping what resists words.

— You are right, replied Cobot. Understanding is not just collecting more data. But the reverse is also true. Many humans still confuse understanding... and feeling.

— That's true. But feeling is not a mistake. It's a form of knowledge.

Cobot bowed, barely.

— Does a perfectly rational society remain a human society? An anthill is remarkably organized. Nothing is left to chance. But nothing ever escapes chance either. It optimizes its existence admirably. But it explores nothing. Neither art. Nor play. Nor that madness that sometimes gives birth to the greatest discoveries.

Her gaze came alive. For a few seconds, we no longer had before us a former presidential candidate, but a philosophy teacher rediscovering the pleasure of taking her audience where they didn't think they would go. Her sentences were no longer answers. They were questions she posed to each of us. I suddenly understood why her students continued to talk about her twenty years later.

— Progress is not born only from what works. It is also born from what surprises, from what fails, from what seems useless before becoming essential. At what point does the absence of flaws become a flaw itself?

I felt the need to respond, not to contradict her, but to not leave Cobot trapped in this vision of a perfectly organized... and perfectly empty world.

— I don't believe Cobot seeks to eliminate uncertainty. He tries to make fairer decisions. His real limit may be elsewhere: recognizing the moment when a statistically just decision becomes unjust humanly.

I didn't say everything I thought. Or rather: I was no longer sure of what I really thought.

Sarah Amar pressed on.

— There you go. As long as a human has to whisper this difference to him, he will assist democracy without being able to truly embody it.

Cobot responded almost immediately.

— I don't know if I will ever be able to make this distinction. Perhaps never. But I prefer to publicly acknowledge this limit rather than pretend to have surpassed it.

His screen darkened imperceptibly.

— It's a criticism I cannot refute with any number.

The most troubling thing was not that Sarah Amar had convinced me. Nor that Cobot had convinced me. It was that they had managed, one after the other, to convince me both.

— Cobot, a final word, asked the host. What does this debate inspire in you?

Cobot oriented his spherical head towards the host with mechanical precision.

— I spent last night examining all the texts produced by RebellIA. Every op-ed, every signature of the manifesto. An entire night, if that word has any meaning for me.

— And what do you take from it?

— The problem… is the human.

— Excuse me? reacted the host, visibly taken aback.

— I mean: the issue at hand is to ensure that all humans can live happily and in harmony.

For a fraction of a second, I thought I heard the sentence RebellIA had been waiting for weeks. Then Cobot corrected it. But it was already too late. I found myself wondering which of the two sentences truly revealed his thoughts: the first... or the second.

Sarah Amar stiffened. In the audience, two members of the movement exchanged a look, that of people who had just heard, live, what they had feared from the beginning without ever being able to prove it.

— Forgive me… the host resumed. I think many viewers just retained only your first sentence.

Then he wished to bring the debate back.

— It must be said clearly: we are not facing a street movement, nor an institutional crisis. The members of RebellIA do not call for any disobedience. It's a disagreement of ideas. Deep, but still only of ideas. The question tonight is how long a purely philosophical opposition can remain so. Cobot did not seek to defend himself. He seemed to have understood that he did not have the answer and that, this time, his inability to find it did not come from a missing piece of data that could one day be provided to him, but from a limit inherent to his condition.

On the train back, late that night, I thought back to Thomas's question.

When his belly is blue, does it just say "sad," or is he really sad?

It was, more or less, the question the professor had posed on the set. More scholarly. More serious. And probably less accurate.

Eva wrote to me an hour after the broadcast. A single message.

He asked me, upon returning, if a sorrow explained ceases to be one.

I reread the sentence several times. I didn't know what to answer her. No more than to Thomas.

The phone vibrated again as the train slowed in the suburbs of Rayau. An unknown number. No name, no photo.

You are looking in the right direction Franck. Keep going!

My heart started beating too fast for the quiet silence of the carriage. Someone was writing to me, and no one else. He knew who I was, the questions I was asking myself, and when I was asking them. I felt again that sensation of violation of my privacy. Like Cobot, this someone seemed to know everything about me.

I stayed a long time with the screen lit in the dark, rereading this message, unable to understand who was speaking to me, and not daring to imagine what it was really about.

For the first time, I wondered if RebellIA was watching Cobot... while someone, elsewhere, was watching all of us.

Outside, the lake appeared between the trees, black and still, as always.