Artificial Intelligence: What for?
ial what for?
AI must adhere to the principles of basic ethics: benefit, do no harm
The term “artificial intelligence” (AI), coined by John McCarthy following the famous Dartmouth Conference on Thinking Machines, will turn 70 in 2026. It's already seventy years old. In this time, it has attracted daily public attention through conferences, publications, meetings, and impactful news stories. This is partly because major technology companies are taking great care to keep the flame of interest in AI alive by announcing astonishing innovations to attract audiences in our age of the attention economy.
From the very beginning of AI, at least three attitudes toward it emerged: according to the doomsayers, the invention of AI is the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity; the enthusiasts went so far as to promise a paradise without death, disease, or even aging—the dream of immortality and eternal youth—just in time; the prudent, for their part, called for a framework of local and global ethics capable of maximizing the benefits of AI for all human beings and for nature. How should we position ourselves in the face of these alternatives?
Aristotle rightly stated that to explain change, one must consider four causes, and that the first of these, in the order of intention, is the final cause . The fundamental question then becomes: artificial intelligence, what is its purpose?
However much AI proponents insist, AI cannot provide the answer itself, because it lacks intention. It is a set of very useful tools in the hands of human intelligence, but incapable on its own of understanding, deciding, and choosing. It is general intelligence that can do so, that indicates which problems are worth addressing, and currently, there is no general intelligence other than human intelligence. As has been said, intelligence consists not so much in solving problems, but in deciding which problems are worth solving.
However, alarming news continues to emerge, such as the report published in this very newspaper on the 14th of last month, which claims that AI is already replacing cognitive work, meaning that white-collar jobs will disappear within one to five years. Job disruption would be inevitable. But at the same time, the other side of the coin is being heralded: the imminent arrival of AI in its promised land—creating a general AI like a human. Always, of course, with the caveat "not quite there yet, but almost." A brilliant way to encourage billionaire investors to increase their contributions with astronomical sums, in a race where tech companies and countries compete for resources and global power. Isn't that eternal "almost" tagline an ideological way of proceeding, because it seems to be based on scientific verifications, but in reality it goes beyond them and displaces the evidence ad calendas graecas , taking into account that the Greeks did not have calends , as Ortega y Gasset already warned?
Truthfulness remains a fundamental condition for valid communication, and in the case of AI, this condition will be met by reporting on the many benefits it is already providing and those it can be expected to deliver in the future, to the extent that scientifically predictable benefits can be established. But it also requires answering a second question, just as important as the first: benefits for whom? For the already powerful, thus widening inequalities? Or for those less fortunate and disadvantaged by society?
Turning to ethics to circumvent ideologies is essential. Any applied ethics, including that of AI, frames its reflection within principles that mandate benefiting, not harming, empowering human autonomy, distributing benefits fairly—in this case, among all human beings, who are affected by AI—and promoting the sustainability of nature. Of course, the world of political and economic interests, both individual and collective, that drives such a lucrative activity is immense. But in the 21st century, these ethical principles are already the indispensable features of a global ethic.
However, during the 70 years of AI, and especially in recent times, alongside the praise, criticisms from a growing number of experts regarding how it is produced have multiplied. Examples include Zuboff's now classic work , *Surveillance Capitalism *, and, in our own country, Ramón López de Mántaras's recent book, *100 Things You Need to Know About Artificial Intelligence*. They rightly agree that, alongside the undeniable benefits of AI, which is already part of our way of life, it is necessary to expose and eliminate intolerable realities, from which we could glean the following.
AI is produced by exploiting the labor of supervisors with poverty wages, by once again colonizing less developed countries, and by plundering the planet. But it also carries undesirable consequences. The digital divide between people and between countries widens, the potential disruption of the labor model, which heralds a new era, makes it difficult to fulfill the aspirations of social democracy, and it is a real temptation to leave decisions in matters that affect human beings in the hands of algorithms, thus shirking responsibility, when the truth is that algorithms do not make decisions because they lack consciousness and will. They offer solutions, and it is we human beings who must decide and assume responsibility. Cathy O'Neil's book , Weapons of Math Destruction, remains painfully instructive.
Faced with such a bleak outlook, it is necessary to return to the question: AI, what for, and for whom? And, fortunately, more and more voices are being raised demanding that AI serve the common good, which in this case is both local and global. It is essential to defend human rights and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, the first of which is to end hunger and extreme poverty—two truly obscene realities at a time when there are more than enough resources to ensure that no human being is poor, much less dies of hunger.
The extraordinary increase in connections and platforms brought about by the Fourth Industrial Revolution should serve to achieve authentic communication that fosters understanding and cooperation on the path to a just peace, beyond the polarizations, conflicts, blackmail, and humiliations to which the most vulnerable are subjected if they wish to survive. If only—to paraphrase Kant—because even a nation of demons, of beings devoid of moral sensibility, would prefer peace to war, the rule of law to the state of nature, provided they possess intelligence. Let alone a nation of human beings with general intelligence, emotions, and a moral compass.