Adela Cortina analiza la ética en torno a las tecnologías y la inteligencia artificial | UNIR

Overview

Adela Cortina’s talk frames today’s debates on artificial intelligence (AI) as less a “machines will revolt” problem and more a human problem of orientation, ethics, and governance in an era of rapid technological acceleration.

1) Ethics for machines vs. ethics for humans (“the north” problem)

• Cortina argues that existing rules and regulations (“road maps”) are not enough for new technological realities. People need a deeper moral orientation—like a compass pointing north—so they can decide what to do when rules fail or new cases appear.
• The central ethical question becomes: What do we humans want? A shared “north” is necessary to avoid losing direction amid technoscientific change.
• She links this to the need for a more cosmopolitan moral perspective, where all human beings can converge on common principles.

2) AI hype, dystopian myths, and how to avoid “Franken-phobia”

• She recounts classic AI dystopia (e.g., HAL 9001 and early “technological singularity” rhetoric) to show how AI is often surrounded by fear-inducing legends (e.g., Golem-type imagery).
• Cortina suggests people chronically overestimate AI advances and underestimate human capacity to manage tools responsibly.
• She criticizes the temptation to treat AI as inevitable doom, urging instead to use AI as an instrument rather than surrendering agency.

3) Using AI or being replaced

• A key issue behind public anxiety is whether AI will replace humans.
• Cortina’s response: the near reality is mainly about using AI tools—especially special intelligence—not full replacement by general or superintelligence.
• She identifies a “doomsayer” mistake: confusing powerful applications with autonomy or personhood.

4) Machine ethics via Asimov—and the limits of rule-based morality

• Cortina discusses “ethics for machines” using Isaac Asimov’s robotics laws (and later work she attributes to Steve/“Stork Hall”/“Storkhall”).
• Her analysis emphasizes that rule-based ethics can conflict (e.g., first law vs. second law), and that machines lack common sense, which humans develop through embodiment, emotion, and lived reality.
• She highlights a deeper concern: even if “ethical rules” are coded, generative AI may produce outcomes and values we did not intend, because it learns patterns from data and generates probabilistic outputs.

5) Three modalities of AI intelligence and ethical implications

Cortina distinguishes:

• Special intelligence (current reality): narrow systems that outperform humans in specific tasks (e.g., chess/Go; medical diagnosis support; logistics; climate-related modeling; business optimization).
• General intelligence (human-like breadth): not yet realized in machines.
• Superintelligence (beyond all human areas): highly speculative; no present evidence of its existence.

Ethical questions shift depending on which kind of intelligence is at stake. For example, if general intelligence ever resembled personhood, it would raise questions about rights, political inclusion, and participation—though she stresses this is not today’s baseline.

6) Real ethical risks: jobs, bias, war, and governance

Beyond sci-fi fears, Cortina highlights practical dangers:

• Job displacement: not purely technological, but political/social—requiring coordinated responses so unemployment and inequality don’t destroy social cohesion.
• Bias and stereotypes: AI systems inherit human biases from training data. The solution cannot be outsourced to machines; humans must define which biases are unacceptable (racial, gender, religious, etc.) and ensure fairness.
• Military-industrial use: early and serious AI advancements are often tied to military applications (logistics, soldier management, cybernetics for war), which she considers especially worrying.
• Political control: she references China-style surveillance/control systems as an example of how AI can enable rigid social governance rather than rights-based freedoms.
• Equity in benefits: advances should benefit everyone under principles akin to justice and human rights—updating the framework of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights rather than abandoning it.

7) Moratoriums and the precautionary principle—under conditions

• She supports moratoriums where risks demand caution, but argues they must be universal to avoid competitive disadvantages (otherwise some actors proceed while others pause).
• She situates this within a broader EU posture: the EU tends toward precaution, while other powers may advance first and regulate later.

8) Biotechnology and “species upgrading” as a parallel path

• Cortina expands beyond AI to biological improvement: if cultural and evolutionary learning can be accelerated via genetic engineering, ethical issues multiply (similar to concerns raised with cloning).
• She stresses the difficulty of defining boundaries—what counts as “normal,” what counts as improvement, and what would be impermissible alteration of the species.
• She warns reversibility would be difficult.

9) Final ethical stance: practical reason and human dignity

• The concluding moral frame is Kantian in spirit: practical reason should guide science so that technology serves human dignity and nature.
• She warns about “reason in a nightmare” (Goya’s sleep of reason produces monsters)—not the absence of reason, but reason without guardrails.
• The takeaway is not fear of progress, but directing progress toward human well-being and ecological care—hope over panic.

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Presenters / contributors

• Adela Cortina (philosopher; emeritus professor of ethics and political philosophy, University of Valencia)
• Alejandro Fernández Diego (mentioned as the author of a recent commentary)
• Alvin Toffler (mentioned via Future Shock)
• Alfred (Isaac) Asimov (mentioned via robotics laws)
• Marvin Minsky (mentioned; MIT AI pioneer)
• César Antonio Molina (mentioned as author of ¿Qué hacemos con los humanos?)
• Melanie Mitchell (mentioned as an AI researcher)
• Ray Kurzweil (mentioned; Google engineering director; The Singularity Is Near)
• Carles Sierra (mentioned; CSIC researcher)
• Vernon Vinge (mentioned via “technological singularity”)
• Frankenstein / Luddites / Turing test / Deep Blue / AlphaGo (referenced examples, not present speakers)
• Emilio (unidentified moderator/participant who asks and comments)
• Another participant/reader (unidentified audience contributor raising questions; e.g., about robot pets and taxes)
• Florentino Porteno (mentioned in closing as a future guest)
• Noa Marid (mentioned in closing as a future guest)