Forum. By examining the participation of French companies to some of the academic events of first plan, in two registers, very different, we find that the level of culture R&D (research & development) in French companies may be abnormally low and undermines the competitiveness of the country. I take two examples.
In the field of artificial Intelligence and the digital society, first of all. Everyone knows how the science and techniques of digital technology have changed our daily lives. Entertainment, autonomous vehicles, health, engineering, finance are all areas where computers and algorithms are playing an ever increasing role. The research of today heralding the innovations of tomorrow, a review of the trends noticeable at the conference of artificial intelligence (AI) is instructive.
With 8 000 participants in 2017, “Neural Information Processing Systems” (” NIPS “) is both an academic conference on the mathematical foundations and algorithmic AI, and an exhibition technology. While the diversity of areas covered is not equal to that of the countries represented, here are the statistics that alert : 85 sponsors from various origins with a strong bias anglo-saxon and asian ; on the european side, the presence of German-and English-marked ; however, only one French company.
Sophisticated algorithms
It should be noted that enthusiasm for AI in a broad sense is attested by the attendance of that conference, multiplied by 8 in ten years (the edition 2017 was the 31st). Many companies attach special significance to the lounge, which is critical for visibility and recruitment, the grey matter forming the object of the lust that everyone knows. The sponsors pay between 5 000 and $ 80 000 according to the coveted status.
To understand to what extent…
