# The Next French Revolution Isn’t Technological. It’s Human. **Date de l'événement :** 14/09/2026 * Publié le 14/09/2026 ### Date 14/09/2026 ## Chapô **As many young people in France struggle to secure employment, economic stability, and a sense of future opportunity, artificial intelligence is often portrayed as both an additional threat and a potential tool for empowerment. Dr. Halfteck, a Silicon Valley AI startup founder and entrepreneur who has worked with the Obama White House and governments across Europe and Asia on AI programs and policies, now teaches AI Innovation at the Sciences Po School of Management and examines how these technologies could reshape young people’s access to skills, work, and economic opportunity. How could AI be used to help young people regain a sense of possibility, develop their skills, and turn their potential into genuine economic opportunities?** ## Corps du texte French youth are in dire straits as they struggle to secure gainful employment and achieve economic security. Left to contend with the burden of economic hardship, financial insecurity, social isolation, and mental anguish, many feel disheartened—even harboring anger and resentment that stem from feeling they have been left out, uncared for, and overlooked.  ### The Squandered Generation Yet failing to tap the immense potential of the country’s emerging youth isn’t just their problem; it will hamstring the future of France, too.  Latest data from [INSEE](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2532173) show that nearly 22% of youth aged 15-24 are unemployed—three times the rate among 25-49-year-olds. Indeed, France’s youth unemployment rate is among the [highest in Europe](https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/youth-unemployment-rate.html), and double the OECD rate. Making matters worse still, the share of people aged 15 to 29 who are neither in employment nor in education or training programs [has risen by nearly 15%](https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/8993246) over the past five years. Low-income neighborhoods (quartiers) and the suburbs (banlieues) of Paris, Marseille, and other major metropolitans, where youth bear the brunt most harshly, have practically become opportunity traps, breeding anger, hostility, and mistrust. Notoriously, banlieues have become a byword for unattended urban blight—and youth despair and disaffection. France is not alone, however, as the youth crisis [is sweeping economies worldwide](https://www.ilo.org/resource/news/youth-unemployment-rises-young-people-face-harder-road-decent-work). In the UK, for instance, the latest UK Youth Poll reveals a similarly bleak picture: only one in four 16-to-29-year-olds believe their country offers a fair shot at success. Since 2010, the share of youth rating their chance of success at 20% or lower has more than doubled, while the share rating the likelihood of long-term unemployment at 80% or higher has tripled. Extraordinarily, over the past year the rate of youth expecting better lives than their parents has halved, from 63 to 36%. Meanwhile, a report released over the summer by the UK Parliament found 16% of youth unemployed, placing the UK above the EU average.  With optimism bias tending to skew survey data, actual numbers are likely worse.  ### Trapped In Hopelessness Such torpor is antithetical to the magic of youth—and deeply corrosive at every level.  Sensing the odds are stacked unfairly against them, young people have come to believe that talent and effort alone will produce neither opportunity nor financial security, let alone upward mobility. With AI turning educated and less educated youth virtually unemployable, squeezing entry-level hiring, making algorithmic job screening virtually insurmountable, and forcing jobseekers to jostle for far fewer jobs, their deepening disillusion and disbelief are all too expected. Discrimination, violence and personal safety concerns, the growing affordability squeeze, inadequate public services, and political instability make matters worse. France, the revolutionary beacon of egalité, liberté, and fraternité, has thus become the Land of Doom and Gloom—as a generation on the cusp of adulthood must contend with endemic hopelessness and the insidious hollowing out of aspiration, ambition, and motivation. With little to hold onto, growing anger and anxiety are hardly surprising as young people feel their lives are unbalanced, unsettled, and unsafe. ### Le Mal Français: The Doom Loop of Hopelessness From Saint-Étienne to Saint-Malo, a generation mired in inescapable hopelessness is heading towards catastrophe—with devastating consequences that will be felt at every level: personal, demographic, economic, political, and societal. In addition to endemic [unemployment, poverty, and deteriorating health and mental wellbeing](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/young-people-and-work-interim-report/young-people-and-work-interim-report), young adults will struggle to form stable lifelong relationships, have children and build thriving families, or partake in civic and communal life. Indeed, [recent research shows](https://www.ined.fr/fr/publications/editions/population-et-societes/francaises-veulent-moins-enfants) the declining prospects of family formation in France, with the decline in childbearing intentions more pronounced among young adults under 30. Responses of intending to have “0 or 1 children” now outnumber those of “3 or more”—a reversal of those given in 2005. This holds true for women (27% versus 22%) and even more so for men (35% versus 15%). While the two-child family norm continues to hold, young people have come to view it as a maximum rather than a minimum. The social and fiscal burden, political polarization, and implications for national economic growth are similarly alarming. With causation and reinforcement running both ways, hopelessness is liable to plunge the youth generation into a trichome trap from which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to emerge unscathed. ### France Should Not Optimize the Present—It Should Reimagine the Future How can France solve this generational crisis—and secure its own future?  At a time when AI offers a previously-unimaginable gateway to the future, France must resist feckless, incremental policy recommendations that belong to a bygone era where outcomes, if any, materialize on a tectonic timescale.  French incrementalism is one of the country’s chief limiting factors—one that holds it back from unlocking its full potential. Moreover, a low tolerance for ambiguity and failure pits tradition and innovation in a zero-sum game, constraining the willingness to undertake pivotal, high-stakes initiatives, heightening the country’s collective status quo bias, and limiting the scale of ambition, imagination, and innovation. While tinkering with education and vocational training programs might help on the margins, entrusting the future to the cumbersome, top-down school- and university-bound models is not only myopic—it actually fails to take advantage of the powerful capabilities AI offers.  Leaders across government, politics, business, education, and society must recognize that the seemingly-safe resistance to bold innovation is failing our youth—and squandering the nation’s economic, scientific, social, and geopolitical future. _The answer isn’t optimizing what exists but reimagining what’s possible._ Critically, the fact that many youth remain unemployed despite having obtained higher education diplomas or vocational training certificates reinforces the urgent need for a novel way of thinking about human potential discovery and development. Raw potential is abundant—and young people should be able to unlock and unleash their potential no matter their socioeconomics or life circumstances. With inspiration and imagination, France can turn its untapped human potential into the most productive engines of growth—at speeds and scale never before imagined. There is no denying the depth of the crisis, nor the enormity of the challenge of averting its consequences. If anything, its scale and severity demand not only bold and innovative thinking but also rapid and iterative experimentation with a new generation of solutions.  In other words, solving this crisis calls for swift interventions that are infinitely scalable and instantly achievable—and massively affordable to boot.  ### Give Every Young Person a “Cow” The breakthrough lies in fusing personal superintelligence with behavioral economics—a solution whose implementation could enable France to achieve rapid, infinitely scalable, and self-propagating impact. In groundbreaking research that earned them the Nobel Prize in Economics, [Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee have shown that low-cost interventions can generate hope and reverse hopelessness](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2019/duflo/facts/)—and, furthermore, that altering people’s expectations about their future can catalyze change that compounds into lasting returns.  Specifically, over the course of many experiments, they have shown that giving poverty-stricken villagers a humble cow—together with a small financial incentive sufficient to encourage them to use the cow productively rather than consume or sell it in the marketplace—helped them change their future expectations and behaviors, escape persistent poverty traps, and set themselves on a life-altering trajectory. As it turned out, when the right incentives are set, a humble cow can transform expectations about one’s personal and economic future—that is, when one stops considering it for its calorific content or spot price and, instead, start looking at it as an enduring, productive asset.  These villagers worked 28% more hours, generated 20% more earnings, obtained 15% more food, and were even able to save. In short, life has changed profoundly. Extraordinarily, such seemingly small assets did not only alter villagers’ expectations of their future—they also f[reed up scarce mental space and limited cognitive resources](https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/cid/publications/books/scarcity-why-having-too-little-means-so-much) to think about more than just scraping by, igniting in turn [a virtuous cycle of hopefulness, effort, and compounding returns](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2012/05/12/hope-springs-a-trap). What’s more, as their optimism increased and mental health improved, villagers sought out additional sources of income, thereby further strengthening their economic security and future earning expectations. These, in turn, motivated them to better plan for the future, acquire new skills, and seek out productive knowledge. ### A “Cow” for the AI Age Recast for the AI age, these behavioral economic insights offer powerful, actionable lessons: with enough imagination, hope-generating, behavior-modifying, life-altering “cows” can take many forms—unleashed through both digital and artificially intelligent tools.  What if personal superintelligence enabled every French tween, teen, and youth to map-grasp-and-tap their unique career potential—namely, the intangible constellation of raw abilities, traits, and mindsets that make-up their special genius?  What if it did not just uncover their hidden potential but also actually provided the practical playbook, [personalized tutors and coaches](https://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone/), and other digital tools necessary to translate each one’s potential into employable and entrepreneurial skillsets? With advancements in AI continuing to unfold at breakneck speed, this scenario is no longer the province of science fiction. In fact, it’s not just achievable—it’s infinitely scalable and, I expect, incredibly impactful.  ### The Power and Promise of Infinite Potential With AI providing a personalized gateway to knowledge, learning, and in-demand skill acquisition, youth can turn their intangible “cows” into employable, income-generating skills—and kickstart the virtuous flywheel of aspiration, ambition, and motivation. Unlocking their potential and building their earning capacity will strengthen their sense of agency, ownership of their future, and self-esteem—an invaluable compounding triad in and of itself. Furthermore, providing youth with the tools needed to answer the gnawing question that’s on every young person’s mind—What should I do with my life?—will solve the most crippling problem they face: when critical, personally consequential knowledge is locked away, outside the realm of one’s known possibilities, one can neither picture nor pursue what one cannot even prompt.  Without doubt, helping young people pinpoint their unique potential and personalized paths to a promising future of work, personal growth, and economic security is both validating and reassuring—thus stemming the insidious erosion of their sense of self-worth. As Duflo and Banerjee’s randomized control trials have shown, changing people’s expectations about the future—while reversing deep-seated hopelessness—holds the key to changing life trajectories.  The individual, familial, local, and national benefits of turning unknown unknowns into knowns are therefore incalculable. ### It’s a “Yes You Can!” Moment for France Still, the impact of personal superintelligence could go even further. As AI enables anyone to develop and bring to market novel products and services, it is tearing down barriers that hitherto have made solo entrepreneurship largely inaccessible, especially for young people lacking confidence, networks, or social capital.  By using AI to ideate and validate, develop and test, and bring to market new business concepts, digital natives can set-up minimally-viable enterprises that, with continuous AI-driven iteration, can grow and generate predictable, scalable income in fundamentally new ways. Embracing an experiential, learning-by-doing approach will enable youth to hone life and business skills in ways not generally afforded by formal education and training.    Implementing these proposals is both practical and achievable—and aspiring presidential candidates, along with local and national leaders, would be wise to take swift action ahead of next year’s elections.  For instance, launching “Yes You Can!” and “Own Your Future!” digital campaigns that give young people the access, incentives, and confidence to become AI-fluent—and use AI to its full potential—would be a powerful start. Crafting campaigns that are embodied in relatable success stories and homegrown role models, can pull aspiring youth and quickly galvanize into a future-shaping movement.  After all, inspiring words are where profound change begins. ### Thématique `#Numérique` **Licence :** `#CC-BY-ND (Attribution, Pas de modification)` **Langue :** `#Anglais` --- ### Navigation pour IA - [Index de tous les contenus](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/llms.txt) - [Plan du site (Sitemap)](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/sitemap.xml) - [Retour à l'accueil](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/)