Cycle IA

To question our democracy is also to understand the technological transformations that quietly redraw our public life. As artificial intelligence upends our societies, the Théâtre de la Concorde offers a space where researchers, citizens, artists and participants in public debate can think together about these profound changes.

How can we protect our democracies in the face of new power dynamics, digital platforms and artificial intelligence systems that now reshape our relationship with information, knowledge and politics?

Conceived and hosted by Hugo Micheron, associate professor at Sciences Po's School of Public Affairs, the public seminar AI, Democracies and the Information Environment, organised by the Théâtre de la Concorde and Sciences Po, returns for a third edition.

Following two seasons devoted to fractures in the public sphere, informational manipulation and contemporary geopolitical realignments, this new cycle turns its attention to the structural transformations that artificial intelligence imposes on European societies.

From September 2026 to May 2027, each session will bring an academic into dialogue with an artist, a writer, an intellectual or a public figure, in order to cross perspectives and nourish the debate.

Programme of encounters: 23 September / Digital sovereignty and the online public sphere. The cycle opens with a major conversation in the presence of Anna Zeiter, co-founder and CEO of W Social.

The encounter will explore the conditions for European digital sovereignty and the stakes of reclaiming the online public sphere.

As a European alternative to the major social networks, W Social defends a model based on identity verification, the hosting of data in Europe and respect for the GDPR. 21 October / Privacy, encryption and the economy of surveillance.

This session will be devoted to the protection of privacy and encryption technologies. It will examine these tools as means of preserving individual freedoms against an economic model built on the massive collection and exploitation of personal data.