A New Social Contract

Latorre offers an essential reflection on the technological singularity. The new social contract is not an option: it is an urgency. We are about to renegotiate one of humanity's oldest agreements. For more than two centuries, the social contract has governed our coexistence, defining what we relinquish as individuals in exchange for protection, rights, and collective order. But for the first time in history, humans share the world with an entity capable of learning, deciding, and acting autonomously: artificial intelligence. Can we trust it to govern? What rights and duties should we establish in relation to machines? What will be the place of the human being in a world shared with an artificial intelligence that may be faster, more precise, and perhaps wiser than our own? Between scientific reasoning and humanistic reflection, the author proposes the need for a new social contract that incorporates three inseparable dimensions—the natural, the civil, and the intelligent—without falling either into paralyzing fear or naïve faith in technology. Artificial intelligence is not only a technological challenge. Above all, it is a political, ethical—always human—question.