Benefits and risks of artificial intelligence: a powerful tool that demands human wisdom
January 27, 2026
By Ana Quintanal
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly present in everyday life. It’s in systems that translate languages, recommend content, detect fraud, help interpret medical images, and generate texts and images on demand. Its expansion is not just another technological advance; it marks a profound shift in the relationship between humanity and technology because it touches areas that until recently we considered exclusively human, such as learning, deciding, creating, communicating, and persuading, among others. Precisely for this reason, talking about AI is not just talking about innovation, but about identity, responsibility, and ethics.
According to documents such as Antiqua et nova (a note published by the Vatican in January 2025), the key is to distinguish between human intelligence and the «intelligence» of AI. The former integrates body and spirit, reason and emotions, freedom and moral conscience. The latter functions operationally: it processes data, detects patterns, and generates convincing responses, but it lacks its own consciousness and responsibility. Even so, it can learn to «morally distinguish» in a practical sense if it is educated with criteria, examples, and limits (like a child), although this ethical orientation depends on human training and supervision. This distinction helps us understand both its benefits and its risks.
What can AI contribute when it is oriented toward good?
AI can be an extremely useful tool when it is guided by a solid ethical framework and understood for what it is: a product of human ingenuity, oriented toward good ends, placed at the service of the individual and the common good, and not the other way around.
Among the many benefits of the proper use of AI, aspects as relevant as its ability to assist in complex tasks by processing large volumes of data and supporting decision-making stand out. In the social sphere, it improves the detection of needs and expands access to essential services. In the workplace, it adds value when it complements humans, automates routine tasks, and enhances creativity. In healthcare, it supports diagnoses, personalizes treatments, and brings care to isolated areas. In education, it offers adaptive tutoring and personalized resources without replacing the teacher-student relationship. And in terms of sustainability, it allows us to anticipate climate risks, optimize energy use, and respond better to emergencies, contributing to more resilient development.
Risks: When Technology Displaces the Human
The most serious risks stem not only from “technical failures” but from a fundamental misconception: treating AI as equivalent to human intelligence. This equivalence pushes us toward a utilitarian view: valuing people for what they produce or the tasks they can perform, as if their dignity depended on performance, efficiency, or measurable capabilities. The human rights tradition says the opposite: that dignity is intrinsic, does not depend on results, and remains intact even in fragility.
One risk we are already witnessing is the crisis of truth in the public sphere. Generative AI produces texts, audio, images, and videos that are sometimes indistinguishable to the human eye. This facilitates disinformation, intentional manipulation, and campaigns that erode social trust. When trust in what is seen and heard breaks down, democratic life deteriorates, polarization grows, and society weakens. Falsification can damage reputations, destroy relationships, and cause real harm.
Another significant risk is the lack of clear accountability or diluted responsibility, as some AI systems operate as black boxes, making it impossible to know how they arrive at their decisions and hindering the determination of who is responsible for harm. Without traceability and accountability at all stages, AI becomes an opaque power without accountability.
Inequality is another major risk, as it increases when technological power and data control are concentrated in a few companies, widening both economic gaps and social and political influence. Furthermore, when access to advanced technologies is not equitable, the digital divide deepens, and new forms of exclusion and poverty emerge.
In human relationships, AI can mimic conversation and empathy, but it cannot feel it. If the workplace is humanized, especially in the presence of children and young people, it can foster superficial, on-demand relationships, impoverishing genuine connections and encouraging isolation.
The risk is not only job losses, but also turning workers into mere executors of rigid tasks, deskilling them, and causing a loss of autonomy. When we prioritize reducing the «human cost,» efficiency displaces the sense of community and justice.
In healthcare, the danger arises when clinical decisions or treatment allocation are delegated to systems that prioritize economic or efficiency criteria. Medicine becomes dehumanized if the relationship between patient and professional is replaced by interaction with a machine.
In education, it can generate dependency and replace critical thinking. If it is used to provide answers instead of fostering inquiry and reasoning, it impoverishes learning and affects academic integrity, facilitating the spread of inaccurate content.
Regarding privacy and control, personal information can reveal behavioral patterns even with minimal data, enabling intrusive surveillance, manipulation, and «social scoring» systems that condition future opportunities. Reducing a person to their data threatens their dignity.
AI also has a significant environmental impact due to its high consumption of energy, water, and materials—a footprint that is often overlooked and that delays the recognition of the urgency of adopting sustainable solutions.
Finally, war: lethal autonomous systems pose a grave ethical dilemma: by delegating decisions about targets and deaths to machines, human moral judgment is eliminated, violence is trivialized, and the arms race is facilitated. No technology should decide on a person’s life.
The underlying criterion: ethics as a compass
The crucial question is not whether AI is “good” or “bad,” but rather what ends it serves and what vision of the human person it embodies. Technology is not morally neutral, as it incorporates the perspectives of those who design, fund, regulate, and use it. Therefore, this document proposes that the intrinsic dignity of every person should be the measure for evaluating emerging technologies. AI is ethically positive insofar as it manifests and promotes this dignity at all levels: personal, social, economic, and cultural.
This implies that it is essential to guarantee transparency, privacy, security, bias mitigation, and accountability frameworks, along with genuine human oversight in relevant decisions. It also warns against dependence: AI should assist, not replace, human freedom and judgment.
Conclusion: a tool that should not take the place of humans
In a time when information and knowledge are maximized and pluralized, and human simulation is perfected, humanity needs something that no machine can produce: wisdom. Wisdom that can only be human, since it implies the capacity to unite decisions and consequences, progress and justice, efficiency and fraternity.
The ultimate measure of progress will not be the quantity of knowledge or the speed of response, but how much we care for the most vulnerable, how much we defend the truth, and how much we preserve what is truly human: responsible freedom, authentic relationships, compassion, and openness to truth and goodness.
AI, in short, is not a substitute for human intelligence. It is one of its creations. This raises a key question: does technological growth make us more responsible, just, and humane?