Review of the ethical committee on artificial intelligence at Pôle Emploi

7 avril 2021

Last February, Pôle Emploi presented its ethical committee on artificial intelligence. Launched in a desire to exploit the capabilities of AI for the support of job seekers, this committee’s primary mission will be to ensure the proper interpretation of ethical issues related to the development of the use of artificial intelligence.

Pôle Emploi wanted to make use of the multiple facets of artificial intelligence to improve the personalisation of support for the 5.7 million jobseekers (in metropolitan France, in February 2021, according to the Dares). In this context, Jean Bassères, Director General of Pôle Emploi, has launched an ethical committee to submit the development of AI uses within the organization to the question of ethics.

This committee will thus be able to express its opinion but also to propose its recommendations as for the attitude that Pôle Emploi must hold towards its use of AI. Pôle Emploi hopes to be able to use artificial intelligence for the benefit of employment within a responsible framework by improving the quality of the service provided and by guaranteeing equal treatment of users.

This committee is composed of eleven members, independent of Pôle Emploi but linked to its management, experts or managers in a branch related to their current skills. Here is the exhaustive list of the members of the Pôle Emploi AI Ethics Committee:

The technical expert is Claire MATHIEU, director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and professor at the Collège de France.
On the legal side, the expert is Claire LEVALLOIS-BARTH, professor of law and coordinator of the “Values and politics of personal information” chair at the Institut Mines-Télécom.
As for ethics, we find Claude KIRCHNER, Emeritus Research Director of the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (INRIA)
as well as Jean-Gabriel GANASCIA, professor of computer science at the Faculty of Science of Sorbonne University.
Jean DEYDIER, director of WeTakeCare, founder of Emmaüs Connect and Stéphanie DENIS-LECERF, president of the association “A compétence égale”, HR director of the Page group France are the experts responsible for “Sachant Emplois”,
while Marie LACOSTE CROS, director of the association “Avenir Nouvelle Maison des Chômeurs”, national secretary of the Mouvement national des chômeurs et précaires (MNCP) is the expert responsible for “Usages”.
Four representatives of the board of directors of Pôle Emploi also joined the committee: Jean-François FOUCARD, representing the Confédération française de l’encadrement (CFE-CGC),
Philippe HEDDE, President of H-Advice, representing the Mouvement des Entreprises de France (MEDEF),
Claire LALANNE, representative of the Confédération générale du travail (CGT)
and Stéphane LHERAULT, Director of Labour in charge of the Pôle Emploi department at the General Delegation for Employment and Professional Training (DGEFP).

Translated from Retour sur le comité éthique sur l’intelligence artificielle de Pôle Emploi