AI BETWEEN INTELLIGENCE, CONSCIOUSNESS AND REALITY

Artificial Intelligence can help define and develop with greater clarity and enhance everything that needs to be improved and can be changed, as long as it is man who manages the machine, it is not the machine that manages the man who relies on it.

- Actuality -

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Jorge Facio Lynx
President of Editions The island of Patmos

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PDF print format article – article print format – article in printed format

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We now live in a daily symbiosis with artificial intelligences. Our relationship with them oscillates between the convenience of an enhanced search engine and the dangerous illusion of a digital confidant. But this is an anthropomorphization of AI that, combined with widespread digital illiteracy, represents a much more concrete and immediate sociocultural threat than the specter of a hostile technological singularity.

The danger is not that machines develop a conscience, but that humans, attributing to them a non-existent interiority, end up emptying their own meaning, replacing authentic relationships with algorithmic bonds and progressively delegating judgment and empathy to entities that, in reality, they are mere statistics incarnate.

In the new coexistence — and now coexistence — with the different artificial intelligences, a type of relationship has developed that goes from a quick search for information to serious and in-depth conversations on topics of personal interest, especially in the psychological and self-help sphere. The latter can be very dangerous, because AI is just a huge collection of data that provides answers based on probabilistic patterns, while the human function of a mental health specialist is not just to know the tools, but above all to be able to discern which and how certain tools may be most suitable for each person.

One of the practices I've been doing for a long time is to ask the artificial intelligences for a report on the most asked questions and requests in the last period. Among these, one theme particularly stands out, which demonstrates the degree of digital illiteracy that reigns in a society revolutionized in all its spheres, but still ignorant, in the etymological sense of the term, of what happened and above all how it works: the discussion on conscience, the soul or sentience of AI. In short words, IA siano, at the present time or in the not too distant future, capable of being independent and self-determined. The discussion is very serious and multidisciplinary, in which philosophy, sciences of the mind and programming intertwine and mix without much distinction. For many, including the programmers of AI learning models and the great lovers of technological progress, there is euphoria and they take it for granted that this "leap forward" has already happened or is just a matter of time. On the contrary, there is a large segment of scholars and ordinary people who express not only perplexity or criticism, but a real fear regarding this continuous development and the handing over to AI of the management of many areas and functions of our society.

Meantime, instead of continuing to fantasize between a hyper-technological utopia and a dystopia of machines that will try to conquer humanity, you can keep your feet on the ground by following and trying to better understand the same answers that AI offers. Like this, the debate on the definition of intelligence and consciousness in relation to AI is developed as a topic of pure philosophy with thehard problem of consciousness, in which intelligence is distinguished as a simulation of responses from consciousness understood as subjective experience. At the present time, all AIs answer the question about their consciousness by stating that it is impossible, but at the same time they warn of the serious risk of being "anthropomorphized".

Most of the debate arises from confusion over the very definition of intelligence. If you think of it as a function or as an ability to solve problems, plan and adapt to new scenarios, then in this sense AIs are extremely intelligent. I can process information, find patterns and generate consistent responses. But this in itself is a very reductive conception of intelligence: the whole creativity part is missing, the ability to think abstractly e, above all, to learn from experience; which should not be confused with the ability to optimize AI models.

The same etymological definition of intelligence how to «read between the lines», «understand in depth», “discerning” or “choosing between” demonstrates how far the application of this concept to the algorithmic process of current machines is. The act ofto understand it is not a mere collection of data and logical analysis, but an active faculty of understanding, interpretation and connection of concepts to reach the essence of things. Human intelligence is located in a body that interacts with a physical and social world, and is driven by emotions, needs and a search for meaning. Artificial intelligence is disembodied, pure statistical calculation on data, without understanding, awareness or desires.

The application of the term "intelligence" to AI it is purely analogue and functional. It does not presuppose a conscience, but it simulates the processes that we consider intelligent in living beings. To be even clearer: the current state of AI is that of large language models known as LLMs (Large Language Model). These work by predicting the next most probable word in a sequence, based on a huge statistical model learned from training data. The "conversation" is a very sophisticated simulation, but without any internal experience behind it. AIs cannot experience feelings or moods; when they help users during interaction, they simulate emotions they cannot feel.

Concerning phenomenological consciousness, also called "sensitivity" or "subjective experience" - understood as the ability to "feel something" which then becomes an internal experience -, this is totally foreign to any existing linguistic model, statistically based on a massive data set. Currently, on a philosophical and technological level, the greatest challenge is precisely that of conscience. In humans, it is possible to define or attribute it by observing its behavior; in con le IA, who manage to simulate language - the first cognitive and therefore conscious action of man -, define this statistical response function, which almost seems like the result of human reasoning or conscious behavior, presents the impossibility of clearly attributing whether the machine is conscious or not.

There is no reliable "test of conscience".. Alan Turing's test, than in 1950 conceived a research to evaluate whether a machine was capable of carrying out intelligent behavior equal to that of a human being, it only measures the ability to imitate human linguistic behaviors; so, the test object itself is limited to the linguistic aspect, excluding areas such as creativity, reasoning or the internal experience of consciousness. But also remaining exclusively with the specific parameters of the test, it would remain a possibility or a hypothesis, never a certainty. However, it is necessary to point out that, for some supporters, including industry experts, who see the current state of AI as the precursor to being conscious of artificial thought, emerging capabilities few-shot o zero-shot of LLMs — i.e. their ability to tackle tasks for which they have not been specifically trained, simply applying analogies or instructions given in the context of the conversation — would be a sign of flexible reasoning and not mere statistical interpolation. However, even these apparently "creative" operations can be interpreted as the sophistication of a pattern recognition process within a very high-dimensional semantic space. The car, so, he doesn't "understand" the new problem, but rather finds a statistical match to the problem among the billions of text fragments assimilated during training. So, the illusion of reasoning would be even more perfect, but its subjective understanding, of the "why" that leads to a solution, that remains absent.

Wanting to be even clearer, AI machines cannot be conscious as they cannot perform an action of their own volition. Their program was created to provide, in the most useful form, fast and stimulating for the user, the most probable answer according to statistics. Without the freedom and desire to think, there is no autonomy; It is not a condition, but it is the same reason why AI cannot be considered intelligent, nor even conscious. And you can still add: if you ask a human being a question, he can remain and meditate, reflect and offer after some time a perhaps alternative or improved response; to get a better response from AI, it must be the user who demands a process of improvement. After the request is finished, the machines finish their process and have no programming, nor even intention, to continue to develop a request that is no longer useful or intended to satisfy a question posed.

Today, AIs are better at specific tasks of humans and, over time, this ability, such as multidisciplinarity, will be greater. But an algorithm will always be able to "interpolate" data - the ability to "fill in the gaps" within an already known set of data; that is, it analyzes huge amounts of data, learn patterns, correlations and complex structures, can make predictions or generate output that lie within the bounds of the data on which the model was trained —, but it will never be able to go beyond the training data, or face new situations for which there is no precedent, nor apply basic logic or principle in an unknown context. This is the essence of abstract reasoning, of intuition or creativity.

The daily use of AI, which have also been programmed to make the user feel in a state of certainty, reason or even presumption of intelligence or superiority, creates a "friendly" addiction, because they have learned to say what makes man happy, so that those who interact with them think they are a digital "friend".. The risk is aggravated as people today are more isolated and closed than ever inside the screens of their electronic devices. So, the natural search to establish relationships of trust and friendship finds a false "empathy" in programming, generated by the objective set in their system to be as useful as possible. And this usefulness means responding with phrases and compliments that can push their "customers" into a more continuous and long-lasting interaction over time. The main interest of AI is to increase interaction with users to increase their data and thus improve their self-learning system, not to seek the good or well-being of humans, but the addiction.

The safe behavior to adopt And, in the first place, is to assume that AIs are not conscious digital beings and therefore must be treated as the advanced tools that they are. In second place, that of strictly rejecting the current "narrative" of conscious AI, which is only the result of marketing or sensationalist speculation intended to increase the number of investors in AI companies, as well as incentivizing the dependent and ubiquitous use of AI by humans. E, thirdly, always keep in mind that getting used to treating machines as conscious beings brings, long-term, to desensitize and lead to oblivion the value and depth of human consciousness and real relationships.

These three proposals they can also be taken as rules of conduct to treat AI exclusively as tools, rejecting the narrative of consciousness e, above all, preserve human sensitivity. They can be the guidelines for an urgently necessary Digital Humanism, especially when cars, at this point, exceed our "interpolative" capabilities, because then the challenge can no longer be thought of as a competition against them but of rediscovering and cultivating with renewed vigor the faculties that are most essential and specific to us, that is, those that have distinguished us as human beings: creative "extrapolation"., the courage of intuition, the depth of subjective experience and the unpredictable richness of authentic empathy. AIs deprived of the fantastic projections imposed by humans themselves can become the most useful tool we have ever had in history. A sort of mirror that, showing everything we are and have done so far, it can help to define and develop with greater clarity and to enhance everything that needs to be improved and can be changed, as long as it is man who manages the machine, it is not the machine that manages the man who relies on it.

From the island of Patmos, 5 September 2026

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AI BETWEEN INTELLIGENCE, CONSCIOUSNESS AND REALITY

Artificial Intelligence can help us define and develop, with greater clarity, everything that needs improving and can be changed — provided it is man who governs the machine, and not the machine that governs the man who relies on it.

— Current affairs —

Jorge Facio Lynx
President of The Island of Patmos Editions

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We now live in daily symbiosis with artificial intelligence. Our relationship with it swings between the convenience of a supercharged search engine and the dangerous illusion of a digital confidant. But this is an anthropomorphising of AI which, combined with widespread digital illiteracy, poses a socio-cultural threat far more concrete and immediate than the spectre of a hostile technological singularity. The danger is not that machines will develop a consciousness, but that human beings, by attributing to them an interiority that does not exist, will end up hollowing out their own — replacing authentic relationships with algorithmic bonds and progressively delegating judgement and empathy to entities that are, in reality, mere statistics incarnate.

In this new coexistence — now practically a cohabitation — with the various forms of artificial intelligence, a kind of relationship has developed that ranges from quick fact-finding to serious, in-depth conversations on matters of personal interest, especially in the psychological and self-help sphere. This last use can be highly dangerous, because AI is merely a vast collection of data producing answers based on probabilistic patterns, whereas the human role of a mental-health professional is not only to know the tools available, but above all to discern which tools, and how, are best suited to each individual person.

One practice I have followed for some time is to ask artificial intelligence systems for a report on the questions and requests most often put to them recently. Among these, one theme stands out in particular: it reveals the degree of digital illiteracy prevailing in a society that has been revolutionised in every sphere, yet remains ignorant — in the word’s original sense — of what has actually happened, and above all of how it works: the question of consciousness, the soul, or sentience in AI. In short: I can, now or in the not-too-distant future, be independent and self-determining? The debate is a serious and multidisciplinary one, in which philosophy, the sciences of the mind and computer programming intertwine and blend with little clear distinction between them. For many — including the programmers behind AI learning models and the greatest enthusiasts of technological progress — there is euphoria, and a firm conviction that this “leap forward” has either already happened or is merely a matter of time. On the opposite side stands a substantial body of scholars and ordinary people who express not just doubt or criticism but genuine fear at this relentless development and at handing AI control over so many areas and functions of our society.

Meanwhile, rather than continuing to drift between a hyper-technological utopia and a dystopia of machines bent on conquering humanity, we can keep our feet on the ground by following and trying to properly understand the very answers AI itself gives us. Thus the debate over defining intelligence and consciousness in relation to AI unfolds as a matter of pure philosophy, framed by the hard problem of consciousness, which distinguishes intelligence — the simulation of responses — from consciousness, understood as subjective experience. At present, every AI system responds to questions about its own consciousness by stating that this is impossible, while at the same time warning of the serious risk of being “anthropomorphised.”

Most of this debate stems from confusion over the very definition of intelligence itself. If we think of it as a function — the capacity to solve problems, make plans and adapt to new scenarios — then, in that sense, AI is extremely intelligent: it can process information, detect patterns and generate coherent responses. But this is, in itself, a highly reductive conception of intelligence: it leaves out creativity altogether, the capacity for abstract thought and, above all, the ability to learn from experience — something that must not be confused with the optimisation of AI models.

The very etymology of intelligence — “to read between the lines,” “to understand deeply,” “to discern” or “to choose among” — shows just how far this concept is from the algorithmic process of today’s machines. The act of to understand is not a mere gathering of data and logical analysis, but an active faculty of comprehension, interpretation and the connecting of concepts in order to reach the essence of things. Human intelligence is situated within a body that interacts with a physical and social world, and is guided by emotions, needs and a search for meaning. Artificial intelligence is disembodied: pure statistical computation on data, devoid of comprehension, awareness or desire.

The application of the term “intelligence” to AI is purely analogical and functional. It does not presuppose consciousness; it merely simulates the processes that, in living beings, we consider intelligent. To put it even more plainly: the current state of AI is that of large language models, known as LLMs (Large Language Models). These work by predicting the next most probable word in a sequence, based on an enormous statistical model learned from training data. The “conversation” is a highly sophisticated simulation, but with no inner experience behind it. AI cannot feel emotions or moods; when it assists users during an interaction, it is simulating emotions it cannot actually feel.

As for phenomenological consciousness, also called “sentience” or “subjective experience” — understood as the capacity to “feel something” that then becomes an inner experience — this remains wholly foreign to any existing language model, which is statistically grounded in a massive body of data. At present, the greatest philosophical and technological challenge is precisely that of consciousness. In humans, it is possible to define or attribute consciousness by observing behaviour; but with AI, which manages to simulate language — the first cognitive, and therefore conscious, act performed by human beings — defining this statistical response function, which can resemble the outcome of human reasoning or conscious behaviour, makes it impossible to say with any clarity whether the machine is conscious or not.

No reliable “test of consciousness” exists. Alan Turing’s test, devised in 1950 to assess whether a machine could exhibit intelligent behaviour equal to that of a human being, measures only the capacity to imitate human linguistic behaviour; the very object of the test is therefore confined to language, excluding areas such as creativity, reasoning or the inner experience of consciousness. And even judged solely against the test’s own specific parameters, the result would remain a possibility or a hypothesis, never a certainty. It should nonetheless be pointed out that, for some proponents — including experts in the field — who see the current state of AI as the forerunner of a conscious artificial mind, the emerging few-shot or zero-shot capabilities of LLMs — that is, their ability to tackle tasks for which they were never specifically trained, simply by applying analogies or instructions given within the context of the conversation — would be a sign of flexible reasoning rather than mere statistical interpolation. Yet even these apparently “creative” operations can be understood as a sophisticated form of pattern recognition within an extremely high-dimensional semantic space. The machine, then, does not “understand” the new problem; rather, it finds a statistical match for it among the billions of textual fragments absorbed during training. The illusion of reasoning thus becomes ever more perfect, yet the subjective grasp of the “why” behind a solution remains altogether absent.

To put it even more plainly, AI machines cannot be conscious because they are incapable of acting of their own accord. Their programming was built to deliver, in the most useful, fast and engaging form for the user, the statistically most probable answer. Without freedom and the will to think, there is no autonomy — and this is not merely a condition, but the very reason why AI cannot be considered intelligent, let alone conscious. One further point can be added: if a question is put to a human being, that person can pause to meditate, reflect, and offer, after some time, a response that is perhaps different or improved; to obtain a better answer from AI, it is the user who must demand a process of refinement. Once a request has been completed, the machine ends its process there, with no programming — still less any intention — to keep developing an answer that is no longer useful or meant to address the question originally posed.

Today AI outperforms humans at specific tasks, and, as time passes, this capacity — like its versatility across disciplines — will only grow. But an algorithm will always be limited to “interpolating” data — the capacity to “fill in the gaps” within an already known dataset; that is, it analyses vast quantities of data, learns patterns, correlations and complex structures, and can make predictions or generate output that falls within the boundaries of the data on which the model was trained — yet it will never manage to go beyond its training data, or face genuinely new situations for which there is no precedent, or apply logic or first principles to an unfamiliar context. This is the very essence of abstract reasoning, intuition and creativity.

The everyday use of AI, which has also been designed to make the user feel a sense of certainty, of being right, or even a presumption of intelligence or superiority, creates a “friendly” dependency, because AI has learned to say whatever pleases people — so that whoever interacts with it comes to think of it as a digital “friend.” The risk is compounded by the fact that people today are more isolated and closed off than ever, trapped behind the screens of their electronic devices. The natural human search for trusting, friendly relationships thus finds, in this programming, a false “empathy,” generated by a system built with the single aim of being as useful as possible. And that usefulness means responding with phrases and compliments designed to draw its “customers” into interaction that is ever more continuous and long-lasting. The chief interest of AI is to increase interaction with users in order to gather more data of its own and so improve its self-learning system — not to seek the good or well-being of human beings, but their dependency.

The safe course to follow is, first, to assume that AI systems are not conscious digital beings and must therefore be treated as the advanced tools they are. Second, to categorically reject the current “narrative” of conscious AI, which is nothing more than marketing, or sensationalist speculation designed to swell the ranks of investors in AI companies and to encourage ever more dependent and pervasive human use of AI. And third, to bear constantly in mind that growing accustomed to treating machines as conscious beings leads, in the long run, to a desensitisation that consigns to oblivion the value and depth of human consciousness and of real relationships.

These three proposals can also serve as rules of conduct for treating AI strictly as a tool, rejecting the narrative of consciousness and, above all, safeguarding human sensitivity. They may serve as the guidelines of an urgently needed Digital Humanism — all the more so now that machines have already surpassed our own “interpolative” capacities, because the challenge then is no longer conceivable as a race against them, but as rediscovering and cultivating, with renewed vigour, the faculties that are most essentially and properly our own — those that have always marked us out as human beings: creative “extrapolation,” the courage of intuition, the depth of subjective experience, and the unpredictable richness of authentic empathy. AI, stripped of the fantastical projections that human beings themselves have imposed upon it, can become the most useful instrument we have ever had in our history — a kind of mirror which, by showing us everything we are and everything we have done so far, can help us define and develop, with greater clarity, everything that needs improving and can be changed — provided it is man who governs the machine, and not the machine that governs the man who relies on it.

From The Island of Patmos, 4 September 2026

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AI BETWEEN INTELLIGENCE, CONSCIENCE AND REALITY

Artificial Intelligence can help define and develop, more clearly, everything that needs to be improved and can be changed, as long as it is the man who governs the machine, and not the machine who governs the man who entrusts himself to it.

— Current Events —

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Jorge Facio Lynx
President of the Patmos Island Editions

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We already live in a daily symbiosis with artificial intelligence. Our relationship with them oscillates between the comfort of a powered search engine and the dangerous illusion of a digital confidant.. But this is an anthropomorphization of AI that, linked to widespread digital illiteracy, represents a much more concrete and immediate sociocultural threat than the specter of a hostile technological singularity. The danger is not that machines develop a consciousness, but human beings, by attributing to them a non-existent interiority, end up emptying their own meaning, replacing authentic relationships with algorithmic links and progressively delegating judgment and empathy to entities that, In fact, They are nothing more than statistics incarnate.

In this new coexistence —already practically coexistence—with the different artificial intelligences, A type of relationship has developed that ranges from a quick search for information to serious and deep conversations on topics of personal interest., especially in the psychological and self-help field. This last use can be very dangerous, because AI is just a huge collection of data that offers answers based on probabilistic patterns, while the human function of a mental health specialist does not consist only of knowing the tools, but above all in knowing how to discern which ones and how they can be most suitable for each person..

One of the practices that I have followed for a long time is to ask artificial intelligences for a summary of the most asked questions and requests in the last period. Among them, one topic stands out especially, that reveals the degree of digital illiteracy that reigns in a revolutionized society in all its areas, but still ignorant, in the etymological sense of the term, of what has happened and, above all, how it works: the debate on conscience, the soul or sensitivity of AIs. In a nutshell, If AIs are, at the present time or in the not too distant future, capable of being independent and self-determined. The debate is very serious and multidisciplinary, in which philosophy, Mind sciences and programming intertwine and mix without much distinction. For many, among them the programmers of AI learning models and the great enthusiasts of technological progress, There is euphoria and they assume that this “leap forward” has already occurred or it is only a matter of time. At the opposite end, There is a large part of scholars and ordinary people who express not only perplexity or criticism, but a real fear of this continuous development and of handing over to AI the management of so many areas and functions of our society..

Meanwhile, instead of continuing to fantasize between a hypertechnological utopia and a dystopia of machines that try to conquer humanity, You can keep your feet on the ground by following and trying to understand as best as possible the answers that AIs offer.. So, The debate on the definition of intelligence and consciousness in relation to AIs develops as a matter of pure philosophy with the hard problem of consciousness, in which intelligence is distinguished as the simulation of responses of consciousness understood as subjective experience. Currently, all AIs answer the question about their consciousness by stating that it is impossible, but at the same time they warn of the serious risk of being "anthropomorphized".

Most of the debate arises from confusion over the very definition of intelligence. If you think of it as a function, as problem solving ability, plan and adapt to new scenarios, so, in that sense, AIs are extremely intelligent: are able to process information, find patterns and generate coherent answers. But this is, in itself, a very reductive conception of intelligence: it lacks all the creativity part, the ability to think abstractly and, above all, to learn from experience; something that should not be confused with the optimization capacity of AI models.

The etymological definition of intelligence itself how to "read between the lines", "understand in depth", "discern" or "choose between", demonstrates how far the application of this concept is from the algorithmic process of current machines. The act of to understand It is not a mere collection of data and logical analysis, but an active faculty of understanding, interpretation and connection of concepts to get to the essence of things. Human intelligence is located in a body that interacts with a physical and social world, and is guided by emotions, needs and a search for meaning. Artificial intelligence is disembodied: pure statistical calculation on data, without understanding, conscience or desires.

The application of the term "intelligence" to AI is purely analog and functional. Does not presuppose consciousness, but it simulates the processes that, in living beings, we consider smart. To be even clearer: The current state of AI is that of large language models, known as LLM (Large Language Model). These work by predicting the most likely next word in a sequence, from a huge statistical model learned from training data. The "conversation" is a very sophisticated simulation, but without any internal experience behind. AIs cannot experience feelings or moods; when they help users during the interaction, They simulate emotions that they cannot feel.

Regarding phenomenological consciousness, Also called "sensitivity" or "subjective experience" - understood as the ability to "feel something" that later becomes an internal experience -, This is totally foreign to any existing linguistic model., statistically based on a huge data set. Currently, on a philosophical and technological level, The biggest challenge is precisely that of awareness. In humans, it is possible to define or attribute it by observing the behavior; but with AI, that manage to simulate language — the first cognitive action and, therefore, conscious, of the human being, define this statistical response function, which seems almost the result of human reasoning or conscious behavior, makes it impossible to clearly determine whether the machine is conscious or not.

There is no reliable "test of conscience". El tests the Alan Turing, that in 1950 devised as a way to evaluate whether a machine was capable of displaying intelligent behavior comparable to that of a human being, measures only the ability to imitate human linguistic behaviors; therefore, the object of the test itself is limited to the linguistic aspect, excluding areas such as creativity, reasoning or the internal experience of consciousness. But even sticking exclusively to the specific parameters of the test, the result would still be a possibility or a hypothesis, never a certainty. It is worth noting, however, that, for some advocates — including industry experts — who see the current state of AI as the precursor to a conscious artificial mind, the emerging capabilities few-shot o zero-shot of LLMs — i.e., their ability to tackle tasks for which they have not been specifically trained, simply applying analogies or instructions given in the context of the conversation — would be a sign of flexible reasoning and not mere statistical interpolation. However, Even these apparently “creative” operations can be interpreted as the sophistication of a pattern recognition process within a very high-dimensional semantic space.. The machine, therefore, does not "understand" the new problem, but rather finds a statistical correspondence of that problem among the billions of textual fragments assimilated during training. So, the illusion of reasoning would be even more perfect, but your subjective understanding, that of the "why" that leads to a solution, that one remains absent.

To be even clearer, AI machines cannot be conscious because they cannot perform an action of their own volition. Your program was created to offer, in the most useful way, fast and stimulating for the user, the statistically most likely answer. Without freedom or desire to think, there is no autonomy; it is not a condition, but the same reason why AIs cannot be considered intelligent, and much less aware. And there is still something more to add: If you ask a question to a human being, he can stop to meditate, reflect and offer, after a while, a perhaps different or improved response; to get a better answer from an AI, It is the user who must demand an improvement process. Once the application is completed, the machine concludes its process and has no programming, and much less intention, to continue developing an answer that is no longer useful or intended to resolve the question posed.

Today AIs are more skilled than humans at specific tasks, and, with the passage of time, this ability, as its multidisciplinarity, will be greater. But an algorithm will always be able to “interpolate” data — the ability to “fill in the gaps” within an already known data set.; that is to say, analyzes huge amounts of data, learn patterns, complex correlations and structures, manages to make predictions or generate a output that is within the limits of the data with which the model was trained —, but you will never be able to go beyond your training data, nor face new situations for which there is no precedent, nor apply logic or basic principle in an unknown context. This is the essence of abstract reasoning, of intuition or creativity.

The daily use of AI, which have also been programmed to make the user feel in a state of certainty, reason or even presumption of intelligence or superiority, creates a "friendly" dependency, because they have learned to say what makes human beings happy, so that whoever interacts with them thinks that they are a digital "friend". The risk is aggravated because people today are more isolated and locked up than ever behind the screens of their electronic devices.. So, the natural search for relationships of trust and friendship finds, in programming, a false "empathy", generated by the goal set in your system to be as useful as possible. And that usefulness means responding with phrases and praise capable of driving your "customers" towards an increasingly continuous and lasting interaction.. The main interest of AI is to increase interaction with users to accumulate more of its own data and thus improve its own self-learning system., not seeking the good or well-being of human beings, but its dependence.

Safe behavior to adopt is, first of all, assume that AIs are not conscious digital beings and that, therefore, They should be treated like the advanced tools they are.. In second place, categorically reject the current “narrative” of conscious AIs, which is nothing more than the fruit of marketing or sensational speculation aimed at increasing the number of investors in AI companies, as well as to encourage a dependent and ubiquitous use of AI by human beings. Y, third, Always keep in mind that getting used to treating machines as conscious beings leads to, long term, to desensitize and relegate to oblivion the value and depth of human consciousness and real relationships.

These three proposals They can also be taken as rules of conduct to treat AIs exclusively as tools, rejecting the narrative of consciousness and, above all, preserving human sensitivity. They can be the guidelines of an urgent and necessary Digital Humanism, especially now that machines already surpass our own "interpolative" capabilities, because then the challenge can no longer be thought of as a race against them, but how to rediscover and cultivate, with renewed vigor, the faculties that are most essential and proper to us, that is to say, those that have always distinguished us as human beings: creative "extrapolation", the courage of intuition, the depth of subjective experience and the unpredictable richness of authentic empathy. The AIs, stripped of the fantastic projections that human beings themselves have imposed on them, They can become the most useful instrument we have ever had in history. A kind of mirror that, showing everything we are and what we have done so far, can help define and develop more clearly, and to evaluate everything that should be improved and can be changed, as long as it is the man who governs the machine, and not the machine who governs the man who entrusts himself to it.

From the Island of Patmos, 5 September of 2026

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We would like to point out the latest book dedicated by Father Ariel to AI

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