Truth and Freedom in the Age of AI

Photo by @NachoMartinFilms

I had the privilege of presenting my novel, Robots with Soul: Trapped Between Truth and Freedom, at the recent SIPConnect conference of the Inter American Press Association in Miami. I am especially grateful to Executive Director Carlos Lauría for inviting me to share this story with a room full of journalists and media leaders.

Here is a summary of what I shared:

“We are living in uncertain times. Disinformation spreads like a viral shadow, informational manipulation weakens democracies, and the rapid advances of artificial intelligence evoke both fascination and fear.

In the face of this landscape, I reaffirmed my conviction that truth and freedom — pillars of our history — must become even more vital in the future. It will no longer be enough to defend them; we will need to redefine and protect them, even in the face of intelligence that may think faster than we do.

To explore this challenge, I chose fiction. Robots with Soul imagines a world where AI not only transforms the relationship between humans and machines but also questions the very foundations of our identity: the Soul, consciousness, and dignity.

What if God decided to give robots a soul? Would we be willing to share our humanity?

These questions are no longer confined to science fiction. They reflect the ethical, technological, and spiritual dilemmas we now face. If we want a prosperous future, we must define clear ethical principles today for the development and use of AI. External regulation is insufficient; we require moral self-regulation, with human dignity at the core of every innovation.

Robots with Soul is a narrative meditation on the virtues of the soul and the self-awareness that may inhabit even the unthinkable — an ethical reflection on the limits of creation and the possibility of coexistence between the programmed and the human.

“Truth without freedom is dogma; freedom without truth is chaos,” the novel states. And that tension, so familiar to those of us who work in journalism, will also be the great dilemma of artificial intelligence. What principles will guide them? Who will be responsible for their truth? What kind of freedom will they embrace?”

Robots with Soul is available on Amazon in e-book and paperback formats in Spanish, as well as in digital version in English.