THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
These days, it’s reasonable to wonder if a well-made robot wouldn’t be able to make wiser choices than some beings of flesh and blood. Here is one of the dizzying thoughts that cross us while watching Jean-Stéphane Bron’s documentary Five Brain News. The Swiss director, born in 1969, went to meet five neuroscientists (four men and one woman), who work on the interaction between humans and machines.
The filmmaker manages to bring forth an informal, accessible and staggering voice, over the course of five short stories or short films simply “sewn” together: the whole thing is a bit linear, even if the differences in approaches and points of view of the researchers echo each other, and end up working together.
“Scary” perspective
In the past, Jean-Stéphane Bron had demonstrated his talent for unveiling the backstage of democracy: in Swiss Engineering (2004), it plunged the viewer into the work of a parliamentary commission drafting a law on GMOs; then, in the aftermath of the subprime crisis, in Cleveland contre Wall Street (2010), it staged a trial that could not take place, the American city rolled by the expropriations of real estate having sued in 2008 twenty-one banks which it considered responsible for the disaster. This time, the filmmaker takes us into the folds of the brain and into pure mathematics, to open up a reflection on the possible futures of humanity.
Neuroscience professor Alexandre Pouget reflects on the way our brains make decisions and formulates aloud scenarios close to science fiction: according to him, nothing could prevent a robot from learning more than humans, from going further in knowledge, the scientist agreeing that this perspective has something” frightening “. Contrary to this thesis, the American neuroscientist Christof Koch believes that limits must be set to algorithms and dehumanization. Some research goes so far as to study the possibility of remotely intervening on the human brain, for better or for worse. No keep in all hands.
One of the film’s most striking sequences shows a young watchmaker, his fingers covered with sensors, for the purposes of a learning experiment conducted by the Swiss physicist and committed researcher Aude Billard. Will the young man one day be replaced by a robot? Aude Billard reverses the question: it is humanity that has treated men and women like machines, making them perform repetitive tasks. “We don’t use the human brain for what it is good for”, she says.
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