Now

By Albert Ferre

A few weeks ago I talked to you about responsibility, about mine, and today I want to talk to you about yours.

Do you know what's missing from almost all the conversations about artificial intelligence that have been going on for years? I'll give you a hint: it didn't come from outside. It never was.

I'm going to tell you a very brief story of mine… A few weeks ago I traveled against all odds to Madrid for an important event.

You can imagine: ten hours of travel round trip, heatstroke, viruses everywhere (everything was bad)

In less than 24 hours I'd lost my voice, and yet that night I still had to attend the ICAB Gala Dinner: music blasting, everyone coming up to greet me, me, proudly displaying my complete lack of voice… In short, I went and discreetly left. And for all that, I paid the price with five days of hoarseness, fever, and everything that followed.

You might say, "Okay Albert, congratulations, you've caught yet another flu this year," but the point isn't the flu. The point is that I knew this could happen , I was fully aware of it, and I went anyway and paid without complaint. I didn't blame the air conditioning, the train, the viruses, or the awful music at the party…

That, exactly that, is taking responsibility.

I'm the first to admit that for years I confused responsibility with guilt; in fact, even today I sometimes catch myself doing it. I punished myself for mistakes as if that could undo them, spending days looking for someone to blame. Bad move, I'm warning you now, a lot of energy wasted for very little return.

It took me years to understand that guilt anchored me to the past; on the other hand, responsibility jolted me back to the present and, above all, pushed me to fight for the future.

Taking responsibility meant accepting that not everything depends on you, but that there is always (and that's a long time) a part that is. And that part is non-negotiable, no matter how many excuses you make, or how many people you blame.

And here's the idea from which everything else stems, so read it slowly:

Your responsibility isn't yours because a law says so. It's yours because morally it resides within you. And no one and nothing can take it away, for better or for worse.

Not a supplier, not a disclaimer , not a governance memorandum, not the Pope, not a Finnish engineer giving away 67 agents.

And that's why, rereading several texts about AI these days, I realized that deep down they were all talking about the same thing.

Let's take it one step at a time, because this is really intense.

In the debate about AI and law, responsibility is constantly mentioned. But it's almost always in only one sense: accountability . Who signs off on things? Who appears in court? Who pays when something goes wrong? And that's both necessary and fantastic…

Alex Dantart nailed it a few days ago on this blog: the model "doesn't appear, doesn't swear, doesn't answer to a school or a court ." And Pope Leo XIV, in Magnifica Humanitas , warns of how difficult it is, in opaque systems, "to identify who should be held accountable . "

They're both right. But that responsibility (the legal one, the one attributed from the outside, the one that points to a culprit) is, for me, like a box in a workflow; it can be moved, it can be transferred, it can be hidden under the fine print.

The responsibility I'm talking about, no, I'll give you more examples:

Lavern was launched a few weeks ago. Are you familiar with it? It's an open, free legal agency system with 67 agents who plan, execute, and coordinate legal tasks on autopilot. I'm telling you, it won't be the only one, and soon there will be thousands.

The most interesting thing about the release isn't the proposal or the open source code. It's in its disclaimer , which states, verbatim, that you use it "at your own risk . "

There you have it. The system does the job and, in the same breath, washes its hands of it. The responsibility doesn't disappear: it bounces back, concentrated on the only human left in the room. You.

And here's what I want you to remember:

Using AI as an excuse to do something inexcusable does not lessen the act, it amplifies it.

Think about a document filed in court with fabricated legal precedent, or think about automating an entire work area—one seems like a mistake and the other a success, right? Technology isn't a moral anesthetic; it's like a megaphone, and the damage only reaches as far as the agents, co-pilots, or autopilots. And besides, the responsibility (the moral one, the one that can't be relinquished) remains entirely yours.

Leo XIV explains it with two very clear images:

The first Babel: the tower that wants to reach the sky, that sacrifices people in the name of efficiency, that confuses building a lot with building well.

The second Jerusalem: Nehemiah, who, faced with the ruins, neither improvises nor delegates to ensure that "everything turns out well." He examines, assigns tasks, takes his section of the wall, and gets his hands dirty.

The difference between the two cities is not technology, it is the personal and collective responsibility assumed.

And now comes what I need to tell you loud and clear, because it's what's getting lost amidst all the noise:

You still matter

I'm telling you this as someone who's been working behind the scenes in the tech world for over twenty years: no matter how much marketing there is, how many dazzling tech demos there are, or how much hype surrounds every new tool, you still matter. And you still get to choose what you do, what you buy, and what you use it for.

Don't let that tech-lust convince you that there's nothing left to do, that the future is decided without you, that your judgment is irrelevant. It's a lie, it's noise to make you buy mindlessly, driven by FOMO; that's all it is.

If you truly want to stay in the game, ask yourself, honestly: where can you contribute value that no machine can? What are you passionate about? What are you good at because of the unique way you've lived, scars and all? That's exactly where your strength lies.

Don't misunderstand me, the state is necessary; institutions, laws, and protections of individual rights are more essential today than ever before to protect us. That doesn't absolve you of a moral responsibility for everything you do. Regulations and memos are scaffolding that stifles debate. But true power lies within you, in what truly depends on you.

A few minutes ago you could say you didn't quite know what this was all about, but not anymore, because now you know what technology can't do and you also know the one thing it can't do for you. And when you know that, there are no more innocent mistakes, only omissions.

The responsibility is in your hands; it cannot be delegated, disclaimed , or relinquished in the fine print that no one reads. It is yours, morally, whether you like it or not, from now on.

And now, I propose that you write in your own hand that you will never delegate to an AI, it's dizzying, isn't it?