An ethical compass for AI
AI is becoming increasingly capable, but who sets the limits of what it can and should do? In this episode of CIENxCIEN, we discuss ethics and AI: bias and discrimination, transparency, privacy, human oversight and accountability. Because behind AI there are always human decisions. And if we are to chart the right course, we need more than just technology: we need an ethical compass.
28/10/2026
"It’s not simply a case of creating an increasingly powerful technology that can do whatever we want, but of steering it in the right direction. Ethics is our compass for the decisions that underpin AI.”
You can listen to this episode in other languages by choosing your preferred audio track in the YouTube settings. The dubbing is done automatically and has not been reviewed by the Banco de España.
Ethical AI: human responsibility to steer it in the right direction
AI has been with us for decades, but its presence in our daily lives has increased dramatically. We use it to draft documents, summarise meetings, do admin and find information. But as its capabilities increase, so too do the questions. Who’s accountable when AI gets something wrong? How can we prevent it from replicating bias? Who sets its limits?
In this episode, recorded on Global Ethics Day, Ana Comellas is joined by María Sebastián, Head of the Banco de España’s Compliance Division, to talk about one of the major challenges posed by AI: how to develop and use it ethically and responsibly.
It’s a simple idea, but one with important consequences: technology has no ethical values of its own. It’s people who select the data, define the objectives, develop the tools and decide how to use them. Therefore, the more sophisticated a system is, the more important it becomes to ask ourselves not only what it can do, but also what we want it to do, how we want it to do it and under what conditions.
Ethical principles must be embedded from the design stage of the solution itself. In this episode we apply these principles to specific situations involving the use of AI: from hiring tools that may reject entirely suitable candidates to lending systems that may discriminate against certain applicants.
It all comes down to one key point: responsibility still lies with humans. AI can analyse information, automate processes and make recommendations, but using it doesn’t mean we relinquish our professional judgement. For human oversight to be effective, the people behind AI must be able to challenge the machine’s output, verify it and, where necessary, correct it or halt the process.
That’s why ethics and innovation can go hand in hand. It’s not merely a case of making AI more powerful, but of deciding where we want to channel that power. This is where ethics acts as our compass: it helps us develop and use AI responsibly, while keeping the focus on people, their rights and the values that we wish to protect as a society.
