Gérard Berry

Biography

Gérard Berry is a former student of the Ecole Polytechnique, a general engineer in the Corps des Mines, and a member of the Académie des Sciences, the Académie des Technologies and the Academia Europaea. He was a researcher at the Ecole des Mines de Paris and the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria) from 1970 to 2000, Scientific Director of Esterel Technologies from 2001 to 2009, then Scientific Director of Inria and Chairman of the Institute’s Evaluation Commission from 2009 to 2012. He has held the Computer Science and Digital Science Chair at the Collège de France since 2012, after holding two annual chairs in 2007-2008 and 2009-2010. His scientific contributions focus on four main areas: formal processing of programming languages and their relationship with mathematical logic, parallel and real-time programming, computer-aided design of integrated circuits, and formal verification of programs and circuits. He is the creator of the Esterel programming language.

Conference: Is there a time or times?

All you have to do is log on, and the information is there, available at the click of a button. We consume it, produce it, falsify it, voluntarily or not, and exponentially increase its volume on the web. This canvas seemed fine and fluid when it was first conceived, but we are gradually losing its contours, thickness and real consistency. Artificial intelligence seizes on data and wields it with ever greater dexterity, ostensibly to simplify our lives. But is it really? Have we adapted to this frenzy, this quest for absolute responsiveness, this instantaneous exchange? Is our thirst to learn, progress and win satisfied or saturated? Are we reduced to digital signatures, combinations of data made available to authorized users? Do we need a digital ruler to orchestrate our daily lives, to manage our planet’s resources, and even those of other celestial bodies?