The world has changed its form. Cities have stretched into networks, markets have moved through algorithms, communication has become instant, and knowledge has passed from libraries to screens. Human beings have learned to intervene in the genome, map the brain, send machines to other planets, and create systems that write, calculate, predict, and decide at a speed that would have seemed unthinkable only a few generations ago.
This is the great moral problem of our age. We have created tools that can influence entire societies, yet we continue to handle them with human motives that have not changed very much since antiquity. Ambition, fear, vanity, greed, the need to dominate, the desire for image, and the avoidance of responsibility did not disappear because the world became digital. They simply found new means of expression.
Artificial intelligence makes this truth clearer. An intelligent machine can analyse data, detect patterns, produce texts, create images, assist in medicine, research, education, and administration. It can become a tool of remarkable progress. Yet the same power can be used for deception, surveillance, manipulation, the automation of injustice, and the concentration of power in hands that are not sufficiently accountable.
The critical point does not lie only in the machine. It lies in the human being who trains it, controls it, sells it, applies it, presents it as objective, hides it behind technical language, and ultimately decides which use of it is considered acceptable. The machine does not introduce ethics into the world by itself. Ethics enters through the human decisions that surround it.
Heraclitus wrote: “Ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων.” A person’s character is their fate. The phrase seems to come from far away, yet it speaks with precision to the present. The fate of a society is not judged only by the intelligence of its tools. It is judged by the character of the people who use them. An advanced system in the hands of people without integrity does not produce civilisation. It produces more efficient forms of injustice.
Today we speak constantly of innovation. The word has become almost ritualistic. Companies, governments, universities, organisations, politicians, and advertisers all use it. Every new platform, every new product, every new model is presented as a step towards the future. Yet we rarely ask with the same persistence what kind of human being this future serves and what kind of human being it produces. A world that optimises everything except its character risks becoming impressive on the surface and impoverished in depth.
Information overload is a clear example. We do not live in an age of silence. We live in an age of endless speech. Every event immediately becomes commentary, every comment becomes conflict, every conflict becomes content. Information does not simply reach the human being. It surrounds him. It stimulates him, exhausts him, angers him, confirms him, distracts him. Within this continuous flow, the distinction between what is true and what is merely impressive becomes increasingly difficult.
The most dangerous thing is not that people are always deceived through ignorance. Often they are deceived through desire. They want to believe something because it suits them, because it vindicates them, because it belongs to their group, because it gives them an enemy, because it removes the need to examine themselves. Algorithms did not create this weakness. They exploited it. They measured it, organised it, and commercialised it.
Public life is therefore filled with certainties without depth. People who have not read enough speak as though they know everything. People who have never doubted themselves demand that everyone trust their judgement. People who cannot bear complexity retreat into slogans. The speed of the age does not always leave room for maturity. It produces immediate reaction, but not necessarily thought.
In this environment, ethics is not a decorative concept. It is not a chapter in a corporate handbook or a fine word in a public speech. It is the practical force that limits arbitrariness when no one is watching. It is the inner resistance against the easy lie, the convenient half-truth, the well-crafted excuse, the abuse that might pass unnoticed. It is what remains when external control is absent.
The modern world has many mechanisms of compliance, but less inner discipline. It has policies, regulations, procedures, audits, frameworks, committees, and statements of values. All these are necessary. Yet they are not enough when people learn to bypass them, use them as alibis, or invoke them without believing in them. The language of ethics can easily become a tool of concealment when it is not accompanied by character.
We see this in workplaces where meritocracy is frequently mentioned, while mediocrity is protected when it proves useful. We see it in organisations that speak of transparency, while real decisions are made in closed rooms. We see it in public debates where truth gives way to strategic communication. We see it in technology too, when the word “innovation” is used to avoid questions about power, responsibility, and consequences.
The larger a system becomes, the greater its moral weight. A small mistake may affect a few people. A mistake embedded in a global digital system can affect millions. A bias that might once have remained inside an office can now pass into a model, a platform, or an automated decision-making mechanism. Injustice becomes harder to see when it acquires a technical form. It does not shout. It does not get angry. It does not always look like arbitrariness. Sometimes it appears as a neutral result.
That is why intelligent machines require more honest human beings. Not only more intelligent ones. Not only more qualified ones. More honest ones. People who can tell the truth even when it does not serve them. People who can recognise error before it becomes harm. People who do not use complexity as a refuge from responsibility. People who understand that the question “Can we do it?” is never enough without the question “What will it cause?”
Our age needs a more mature understanding of progress. Progress cannot be measured only in speed, productivity, capability, and scale. It must also be measured in the quality of human life, in justice, in trust, in truth, and in responsibility. Otherwise we produce a world that knows how to function better, but not necessarily how to live better.
The human being is the weak point of his greatest achievements. Not because he is incapable, but because he is divided. He can create and destroy with the same hand. Heal and exploit. Seek truth and prefer lies when they suit him. Speak of the common good while serving private interest. This fracture is not abolished by technology. It is transferred to a larger scale.
This is where the value of ancient wisdom lies. We do not need to turn it into a museum-piece invocation, nor load the present with aphorisms. It is enough to understand that earlier civilisations saw clearly something that remains true: human beings may change their tools, cities, institutions, and languages, but their inner struggle returns in a new form in every age. Hubris, vanity, greed, the blindness of power, and the need for self-restraint do not belong to the past. They circulate today under modern names.
If we wish to speak seriously about the future, then we must speak seriously about the human being. Not as a user, customer, voter, productive unit, or set of data. As a moral being who can rise to the level of his power or be crushed by it. Artificial intelligence, biotechnologies, global networks, and automated infrastructures do not free us from this need. They make it urgent.
The world has changed its form, but human beings still carry the same inner fractures. This must be the starting point of every serious discussion about progress. Intelligent machines will not correct the dishonest human being by themselves. They will give him stronger means. That is why the question of the future is not only technological. It is deeply moral.
The future will not be judged by whether machines become intelligent enough. It will be judged by whether human beings become honest enough to use them.
Bibliographical and Indicative References
Heraclitus, fragment B119: “Ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων.”
UNESCO, Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, 2021.
OECD, OECD AI Principles, originally adopted in 2019 and revised in 2024.
European Union, Artificial Intelligence Act, 2024.
Zuboff, Shoshana, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, PublicAffairs, 2019.
O’Neil, Cathy, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Crown, 2016.
Noble, Safiya Umoja, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, NYU Press, 2018.
Kozyreva, Anastasia, Lewandowsky, Stephan, and Hertwig, Ralph, “Citizens Versus the Internet: Confronting Digital Challenges With Cognitive Tools,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2020.
Pennycook, Gordon, and Rand, David G., “The Psychology of Fake News,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2021.
Floridi, Luciano, and Cowls, Josh, “A Unified Framework of Five Principles for AI in Society,” Harvard Data Science Review, 2019.