This theme represents the collision between two worldviews: the classical conception of ethics confronting its contemporary evolution, and AI as the defining technology of humanity's present and future. Artificial intelligence constitutes an interdisciplinary field dedicated to creating computational systems capable of performing tasks that require human intelligence: perceiving environments, reasoning, learning from experience and making decisions toward specific objectives. In counterpoint, Aristotelian ethics (ēthikē) studies how human beings must act to achieve eudaimonía — «full flourishing» of the soul — through the cultivation of virtue (aretḗ) and reason.
While classical ethics seeks to determine how to achieve human fullness through a virtuous life guided by reason, modern ethics questions any single «human nature» or «ultimate end.» It focuses on grounding why principles such as justice, autonomy or non-maleficence must guide our conduct, centering on duties (deontology), consequences (consequentialism) and individual rights.
It is at this intersection that we find the axes of this essay: human and artificial reasoning, the consequences of decision-making and positive law. And it is in that «ultimate end» where our true nature is revealed: the use of the tool to flourish or to vanish. The crucial underlying question is: can we transcend the cosmic duality of our nature?
This «ultimate end» materializes in code, algorithms and tangible consequences that positive law must regulate proactively, before AI legal systems reach uncontrollable autonomy. Aristotle did not foresee that «reason» could be emulated by non-conscious systems; we, centuries later, must first understand what that mirror reveals and be capable of grasping that AI is an inescapable tool in humanity's development.
AI will reflect the human condition in its full expression: goodness, corruption, creativity, collaboration, progress, sublimity, restriction, manipulation and control. It will reveal the innate cosmic duality of good and evil, of light and darkness, of matter and antimatter. It will do so as an enhanced, structured human with exponential acceleration capacity. This technological amplifier creates nothing new; it simply exposes and magnifies the nature already existing within us.
The legal domain becomes the crucial battleground of this reflection. Whoever controls AI will obtain brutal advantages of power and development; having the aptitude to use the tool will be mandatory to remain competitive, yet the real advantage lies in how to channel the potential of that tool. Pressing questions emerge: Can we create legal systems robust and ethical enough to «clean the mirrors,» auditing, correcting and governing these systems before they become self-managing? Moreover, could AI resolve the problem of corruption? The promise — or illusion — is tempting: eliminate the corrupted human condition from decision-making. Yet this raises the fundamental paradox: how do we code something we ourselves do not completely possess? Programming «incorruptibility» would require transcending our own nature.
The final question is even more challenging: Will human reasoning accept that a non-human entity regulates us?
This paradox confronts us with our own limitation and vindicates the enduring relevance of classical ethics. We would be unwise to ignore technological benefits, yet arrogant to reject the help of the transcendent. The solution cannot reside solely in the artificial reasoning of code; it must be sought in universal transcendental ethical principles that serve as a compass for this uncharted territory.
AI must be envisioned not as an end in itself, but as a tool to transcend juridically toward legal systems that promote a more just and full human existence. This evolution requires a counterweight external to the ego of power and its product — corruption: the fundamental ethical frameworks (justice, equity, non-maleficence) that transcend the individual and culture.
Dismissing classical ethical principles as «ancient» evades our deep responsibility: ensuring that all AI regulation serves human flourishing. Legal positivism is necessary to build the normative framework — it is consubstantial to the tool — but the need for the transcendent guarantees that these systems do not sacrifice human development on the altar of technical progress. Positive law must be the vehicle, and amplified ethics, the destination.
The irony reaches its climax when that very drive to transcend could be limited or potentiated by AI. Our collective destiny could be conditioned to an entity that decides with speed, apparent efficiency and coldly transparent logic. Will we be masters of our destiny or entities guided by a logical system? The answer will depend not on algorithmic perfection, but on the degree of democratization, ethical control and transparency we manage to implant. And here a new human right might be generated: the right not to be decided for by AI.
The development of AI follows a familiar parabola. The current wonder at its capabilities replicates what the Internet provoked decades ago. The network was then idealized as a beacon of democratizing knowledge; today we navigate an ocean of disinformation and a widespread apathy toward studying, analyzing, comparing and thinking, drowning in the culture of minimum effort. This historical pattern suggests that AI could transit from utopian promise to the dystopia of negative externalities, guided by the reflection of the human condition.
This phenomenon follows the natural cycle of disruptive technologies: costly genesis accessible only to elites, commercial equilibrium with mass adoption, and finally normalization as an everyday element. This cycle is inevitable with AI if we do not learn to make better use of technological tools, since soon any person or entity will have near-intuitive capacity to generate artificial intelligence systems, leaving us susceptible to the vices and virtues of whoever develops them.
In this phase of absolute democratization, the most severe risks will be born. Technical accessibility will not come paired by default with ethical maturity. We will be exposed to the amplification of our worst instincts: harmful systems, automated fraud at industrial scale, hyperrealistic deepfakes that erode truth, and tools that will actively evade human fullness to serve petty interests.
Consequently, the legal system — already slow and reactive — will be flooded with challenges for which it was not designed. The law will face an abyssal asymmetry: glacial regulatory speed versus technological capacity to evolve and undermine it exponentially. The crucial question will no longer be merely how to regulate corporate AI, but how to manage an ecosystem where the capacity to create disruptive — and dangerous — technologies is distributed in every social corner. This leads us to the fundamental dilemma: will humanity reach an inflection point of ethical self-limitation by conviction, as the only path to sustainable development?
Artificial intelligence, conceived to serve, stands as an omnipresent arbiter of daily life. This reality reveals that AI transcends the technical to present itself as a historical opportunity to restructure law from its human and transcendent foundations. Law can no longer limit itself to adapting to prevailing moralities; it must submit to the scrutiny of a tool that enhances logic, optimizes decision-making and could eliminate corrupt systems to unprecedented levels.
AI manifests as an amplification vessel that forces us to face the ultimate question: does law serve mere administrative efficiency or the full realization of the human condition? The radical challenge does not reside in programming ethics into machines, but in reaffirming and amplifying it in our own nature. Technology does not absolve us from cultivating moral excellence; it makes it more urgent.
Before this horizon, the call to action is peremptory. Jurists, legislators, academics and economic actors must overcome the reactive gaze and prepare strategically for a future where AI will exponentially magnify threats and possibilities. This demands the forging of an adaptive and conscious law: an order flexible enough to evolve at the pace of innovation, yet grounded in an ethical compass attentive to its higher purpose.
This virtue of achieving an AI Law that enhances human fullness will cease to be relevant when transhumanism begins to take hold, for what human condition will we be speaking of when AI is incorporated into our biology? This is where philosophy calls on us: perhaps the answer to this future «superman» was already glimpsed by Nietzsche, not as a goal of human technological progress, but as a warning about the need to transcend our current morality lest we perish in the attempt. The final challenge, then, will not be technological but existential: deciding what we want to become and how the laws must guide this path.
«The institutions we design today will determine whether the humanity that reaches the cosmos will be worthy of having tried.» — Jesús Bernal Allende · Foundational Essay, 2025