HUMAN INTELLECT IN THE FACE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS THROUGH THE LENS OF THOMAS AQUINAS

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The aim of this article is to analyze the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in human formation, considering the intellectual condition of the human person. To this end, four aspects of the issue are examined. First, it discusses how Thomas Aquinas understands that the human being can only be regarded as truly human insofar as the intellect is developed and exercised. Second, AI is analyzed as a product of capitalism, developed with the purpose of generating profit for its creators. Third, debates that present the use of AI in education as a positive tool with the potential to transform teaching processes are examined. Finally, perspectives that highlight the ethical issues related to the use of AI in schools are discussed. Throughout the analysis, it is shown that AI is a tool designed for human activities but remains dependent on human action for its operation, since it does not produce knowledge autonomously; rather, its outputs result from the compilation and processing of previously existing information. This study neither endorses nor rejects the use of AI in education. Instead, it understands AI, from a historical perspective, as a tool serving the interests of bourgeois society, while recognizing that it is the human intellect that produces, preserves, and disseminates knowledge, thereby shaping social life. The analysis is grounded in the theoretical and methodological principles of Social History, from which two fundamental concepts are derived: memory and the longue durée. Memory preserves the understanding of the human person as an intellectual being, whereas the longue durée makes it possible to bring theoretical formulations from other historical periods into dialogue with contemporary issues.