AI Will Only Be Progress If It Is Shared, Say French Tech Leaders

In a joint op-ed for Journal du Net, leaders from E-mma, Tech Show Paris, Tech With Women Club, Women in Tech France and Yeeso call for inclusive access to AI.

Artificial intelligence is no longer a technology we can observe from a distance. It is entering our businesses, gradually transforming our professions, and changing the way we learn, work, create, and access information. Tomorrow, it will have an even greater impact on our career paths and our relationship with essential services.

In the face of this transformation, one question must bring us together: who will truly benefit from it?

A technological revolution is not, by nature, a social advance. It only becomes one when everyone can make it their own, when its benefits are widely accessible, and when it opens up new opportunities instead of deepening existing divides.

This is why we want to stand by a simple conviction: artificial intelligence must become a tool for empowerment and equal opportunity.

The real challenge is no longer just access to technology, but the ability to make use of it

For a long time, digital inclusion was mainly about access: access to equipment, to a connection, to digital services.

Artificial intelligence forces us to broaden that definition.

Being able to access a tool does not mean being able to benefit from it. As AI becomes part of our daily lives, a new divide could emerge between those who know how to understand, question, and use these technologies, and those who are left behind or unable to benefit from them.

This divide is not just technological. It can be educational, professional, social, generational, or geographic. This gap is already measurable. According to the Baromètre du numérique, 25% of men in France use AI at work, compared to 20% of women; in their personal lives, the gap is eight points (30% versus 22%). Globally, women are about 20% less likely than men to use generative AI tools, according to the Gender Snapshot 2026 from UN Women.¹ The divide also exists within organizations: 52% of men say they have access to AI at work, compared to 31% of women, and 40% of men have received AI training from their employer, versus just 24% of women.²

We must therefore prevent the digital divide from being replaced by an artificial intelligence divide.

This means viewing AI proficiency not as an expertise reserved for engineers or data specialists, but increasingly as a skill that should spread throughout society.

Understanding what AI can do. Also understanding what it cannot do. Knowing how to use it wisely, check its results, identify its limits, and maintain your own judgment—these skills will become essential.

The stakes are high. In a society deeply transformed by AI, lacking these keys could increasingly mean having less access to certain opportunities.

Making skills the first lever for inclusion

We must therefore start with skills.

Artificial intelligence should be accessible to a high school student considering their future, someone retraining for a new career, an employee whose job is changing, a job seeker, an entrepreneur, a teacher, or a public sector worker.

The goal is not to make everyone an AI expert. It is to ensure everyone understands these technologies well enough to use them wisely.

This requires a collective effort in awareness, introduction, and lifelong training.

This effort is all the more important because artificial intelligence itself can become a powerful tool for learning and empowerment. Used wisely, it can make knowledge more accessible, support the acquisition of new skills, personalize some training paths, help overcome language barriers, or make certain content more accessible.

But these opportunities will only matter if we ensure they are available to as many people as possible.

Skill is the first condition for freedom in the face of technology.

Designing AI with society's diversity in mind

Inclusion does not only happen when we use technology. It starts much earlier, when technologies are imagined and designed.

An artificial intelligence system learns from data, technical choices, and representations of the world. The people involved in its design, the data used to train it, and the situations considered all shape the resulting services.

This is why diversity in tech professions is not a side issue.

It directly affects the quality of the technologies we build. This question also arises upstream, in the very design of technologies: globally, women make up only about 22% of AI professionals, and less than 14% of leadership roles in the sector.³

We must continue to open up science and tech fields to women, to young people from all regions and backgrounds, and to those whose paths are still underrepresented in the tech ecosystem.

But we need to go further.

Designing inclusive artificial intelligence also means considering from the outset the diversity of its users: their ages, social situations, digital skill levels, possible disabilities, languages, uses, and needs.

Inclusion should not be an afterthought added after innovation. It must become one of its design principles.

Using AI to create new opportunities

Artificial intelligence can also help us solve challenges that our public policies, businesses, and nonprofits have faced for years.

In education, it can help support certain types of learning.

In employment, it can help identify skills, facilitate career changes, or connect people with opportunities.

In career guidance, it can help people explore paths that might otherwise remain unknown.

In access to services, it can help simplify some processes or make information more accessible.

For people with disabilities, AI-powered assistive technologies also open up significant new possibilities for independence, communication, and access to work.

These opportunities should neither be idealized nor taken for granted. They must be tested, evaluated, and measured against real-world conditions.

The right question is not just: "What can we do with artificial intelligence?"

It is also: "Who does this innovation actually help do something that was previously more difficult or out of reach?"

This is the standard by which we must learn to measure progress.

Making inclusion a collective responsibility

No single player can meet this challenge alone.

The public sector has a crucial role to play in guaranteeing rights, supporting transformations, developing skills, and ensuring that the benefits of innovation reach all regions and all of society.

Companies are responsible for integrating these issues into the design and rollout of their technologies, but also in supporting their employees.

The education sector and training organizations must prepare everyone to work and grow in an environment where AI will be increasingly present.

Nonprofits also play an irreplaceable role. Thanks to their knowledge of communities, regions, and social realities, they can identify needs that sometimes escape institutions or businesses.

Finally, the tech ecosystem must accept a special responsibility: not to measure the success of artificial intelligence solely by the power of its models, the number of users, or the productivity gains it generates.

We must also ask ourselves how many new opportunities it creates, and for whom.

Three ambitions for action

It is in this spirit that we want to collectively pursue three ambitions.

• First, democratize AI skills by multiplying initiatives that allow everyone to understand, experiment with, and gradually master these new tools.
• Second, promote artificial intelligence designed for everyone by better integrating the diversity of backgrounds, uses, and needs into both its design and deployment.
• Finally, foster and support positive-impact AI use cases, especially in education, employment, career guidance, accessibility, and access to services.

These commitments are not an endpoint. They must be the starting point for a broader movement.

Because the question before us goes far beyond technology.

It concerns the kind of society we want to build with it.

Today, we have the chance to make artificial intelligence not a transformation reserved for a select few, but a new capability available to the greatest number.

This will require vigilance, investment, cooperation, and above all, a constant willingness to measure innovation by its real usefulness to society.

Technological progress only truly matters when it becomes shared progress.

This is the ambition we want to pursue together today.

This op-ed was published for the IA & Inclusion Summit, co-organized by E-mma and Tech Show Paris, with the support of JDN, the event's media partner.

Signatories:

Dipty Chander, President of E-mma

Caroline Ballu, Director of Tech Show Paris

Adia Danso, President and Founder of Tech With Women Club

Angela Naser, Director of Women in Tech France

Houleymatou Baldé, Founder and CEO of Yeeso

1 Baromètre du numérique, "What is the relationship between French women and artificial intelligence?"; UN Women, Gender Snapshot 2026.
2 WILLA, "AI will widen inequalities between women and men."
3 BPW France, "Women and AI: triple penalty"; UN Women, Gender Snapshot 202

This article was automatically translated from French. Read the original version: https://www.journaldunet.com/intelligence-artificielle/1557299-l-ia-ne-sera-un-progres-que-si-elle-est-partagee/