The Truth has Roots
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Only with truth can you build on. Not only because it has roots, but it also has connections and can withstand the inclemencies of time, adversity and lies. It has connections with reality, thus from truth springs the strength needed to make sustainable things, the impulse to be inspired and creative. It expands and can motivate hearts and wills, because it’s greater than us, so others can follow its lead and develop into something real and sustainable – something human.
Lies, on the other hand, are devoid of anything that can sustain them but the relational consensus or the manipulative systems they devise. The purpose of lies is to trick people into believing they are true; but it lacks consistency, they sow illusion and harvests discouragement when they are exposed… and they will be revealed! In Spanish there is a saying, “las mentiras tienen patas cortas” (lies have short legs) or we could say, it has a limited shelf life. When a lie is born, it needs to be sustained with other lies and falsehoods, because it has no real life or connections of its own. It is a human construction.
Most importantly, when we are grounded in a lie we fumble with quicksand, always alert to not be exposed by the truth we tried to masquerade. When standing on the truth, it is upheld by all other truths, and it always grows into something greater.
What does it mean for human agency or decision-making that truth grows and lies collapse?
One example of the ethical dilemma of AI in our world
There is no question that all the evils of our world can be exacerbated by AI, but what we fear is not AI, but rather this amazing tool in the hands of unscrupulous people; just like my nine-year-old girl is afraid of monsters in movies, not because they are real because she knows they are not, but because they take hold of her ideas.
OpenAI, the leading AI company in the world, is now working under a $200 million defense contract with the Pentagon. The contract in question is to develop prototype "frontier AI" capabilities to tackle critical national security challenges. These challenges include warfighting applications (i.e., defense/strategic military use) and enterprise domains (i.e., administrative, logistics, and support functions). [Reuters; here is the original PDF defense contract - June, 16 2025]
OpenAI has stated publicly and through policy documents that its models must adhere to strict use-case limitations, specially in military or national security contexts. In other words, they have an ethical code they adhere to, and the Pentagon must accept it. Here is a succinct detail of OpenAI’s Use Case Policy:
Prohibited Uses in Military Contexts
OpenAI’s current Use Case Policy includes clear prohibitions, even after lifting its blanket ban on military partnerships in 2024. Specifically, the models cannot be used for:
Weapons development
Targeting systems
Autonomous lethal systems
Surveillance or tracking of individuals without due process
Any use designed to directly cause harm or loss of life
These constraints were reiterated when the company announced its new "OpenAI for Government" initiative. In that announcement, OpenAI emphasized: “We will only pursue opportunities that are aligned with our mission and where the use of our tools is governed by appropriate safeguards.” (Introducing OpenAI to Government).
Most Americans – and Westerners for that matter – are demonstrably proud of these limitations, even those more cynical agree that it is better to have these filters than not to have them. This brings us to a fundamental problem: not that we lack ethical policies, but that we mistake rules for moral thinking. We haven’t thought through the deeper consequences of our stance — and what we call ethics may in fact be our most dangerous blind spot.
We are charged with, “standing for what’s right”
The Western alliance with all its faults and weaknesses, is the best the world’s civilizations have ever produced. It upholds the inalienable rights of people and their capacity to pursue life as each see fit; also the right to free speech, which is a natural extension of the first right. Other alliances in our current world order do not abide by these fundamental social rights and their societies show the consequences of their values and what they hold to be true – using every means to control society and sustain their power at all costs. The massive migration toward the West is irrefutable evidence of the contrast between them.
With AI, not only businesses and corporations are employing it to advance their values and what they stand on, But what is more critical, governments are using AI to consolidate their aims and agendas. And if we have learned anything from world history, the only deterrent for war and assurance of peace is the huge cost of a confrontation. If there is a disproportionate development of strength between the two world-alliances poles, and if the stronger one finds that the cost of overrunning the other is low enough to justify war for expansion and conquest, it will do so and nothing will stop it.
We trust that being on the right side will uphold us, but truth alone cannot protect us from being overrun – unless it is also coupled with wisdom and strength. If we constrain our development of AI while other regimes push forward with no regard for ethics or transparency, then we may lose the very ground we stand on. The truth is: a lie armed with power can still win… temporarily.
We have ourselves a pickle of a problem… and it’s not going away!
There is a hard solution… and a soft one too
Human beings are a curious bunch, we sometimes paint ourselves into a corner and then we launch a proverbial injustice-rage to see if someone can get us out of the corner we so willingly got ourselves into.
Westerners have been advancing toward a vision of the future without regard for its complex consequences. We have used science, created technology and advanced into a world without regard to who we were and how we got there; we have placed the consequences comfortably in the passenger backseat. Money and power have been driving our world since the end of WWII, and the conscientious voices that warned us were stifled, overrun or ridiculed. And please, it’s not just governments, we all cherish money, status and recognition above being truthful, integrity in our decisions and social wisdom in our choices.
The Soft Solution has a hard predicament
The West can choose to do its best to maintain the “moral ground” and not develop, or crutch the development of “unethical applications of AI” and use AI to push forward and develop wealth and power with it to buy our strategic position so as to deter the “other alliance” from engaging in war. It is a risky move and if we fail in our predictions, there won’t be enough time to catch up, and a new historical era may usher in a dim and dark scenario for humanity: darkness and oppression will be in charge for who knows for how long, considering the assistance of AI.
The Hard Solution has no guarantees, but if it works…?
For the longest time in history, the value of sacrifice, “do the right thing”, and stand up against injustice, nurture self-knowledge, grit and character. True, societies were not molded out of these ideals, politicians and powerful families were cynical and self-serving, we failed to mold societies with the values that could ensure true prosperity and social cohesion. The American Founding Fathers tried their best to stir the difficult and troubled ship of American society toward this goal. But we have failed to follow the lead.
AI is challenging us to recognize who we are and where we want to go – and doing so has become imperative – as well as how we get there and who we become. I am so painfully aware that we in the West are not ready to have an AI without safe rails, but the price we are to pay is too great if we don’t… and also if we do.
How do we set new ideals in society? How do we set socially the true values of justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom to ensure the proper use of AI?
I’m not certain. Ethics is a unique human ability; AI cannot be ethical simply by “ensuring” we can’t use it unwisely. Even the best, most ethical AI limitations cannot constrain a fool from turning its application into something devastating. We must become ethical ourselves; then even an autonomous lethal system can be restrained from being wrongly used, but only when those who employ it understand the consequences of using it wrongly.
AI ethics can’t be encoded, only embodied
We fear ourselves, we fear making our nightmares come true. We fear our inner fool taking control of something more powerful than an atomic bomb. No government or daddy is going to get us out of this dilemma. We must gear up and suck it in, learn in the process and keep struggling to become better than we are… and politicians and people in power better start realizing the music will stop, maybe sooner than later, and we all will be left without a seat for our bones.
But at the end, each person is responsible for themself and their family – we need to embody the values of truth as an integral part of self-knowledge, grit and character in our lives and works, and wisdom and strength will follow.
Ethical limitations cannot substitute for the necessity of moral growth.
In the end, ethics cannot be outsourced – not to algorithms, nor policies, nor governments. It must be lived and embodied, or it will be lost.
