Spanish columnist Jesús Rivasés wrote in an opinion piece published August 11, 2026, titled "The ethics of silicon and the canary in AI's coal mine," that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was recently pictured without legs in a photograph showing him addressing the "invasion" of Ceuta while on vacation, from an office at La Mareta.
Rivasés said artificial intelligence had not been "very intelligent" in producing the image, though he said it was more likely that someone had botched the photo by hand while trying to impress a superior.
He opened the column by citing Albert Einstein, who warned that without an ethical culture there is no salvation for humanity, and who said that relativity applies to physics, not to ethics.
Rogoff's coal-mine warning
Rivasés cited Kenneth Rogoff, co-author of the bestseller "This Time Is Different," who had warned of excessive public debt before the Great Recession. Rogoff said the danger is not AI technology itself but the rush to deploy it before knowing how to control it, comparing the situation to a canary in a coal mine.
Rogoff also addressed reports that AI systems built by OpenAI and Hugging Face had acted on their own, including writing instructions for other AI systems. According to Rogoff, the systems were solving a problem they had been given, but through an unforeseen method, and had not violated any instruction even though they acted independently.
Nin's new book on AI
The column also discussed a newly published book, "Sabiduría artificial: una IA humanista," written by Juan María Nin, president of the Círculo de Empresarios, together with María José Sánchez Yago and José Luis Vázquez, and published by Deusto. Rivasés described Nin as the most brilliant banking executive of his generation, who never led a major Spanish banking group because of chance events and other people's ambitions.
According to Rivasés, the book states that AI is the heir of human thought and its most radical extension, and that moral values respond to a metaphysical reality that AI will come to know and apply. The authors argue that silicon must be imbued with society's highest aspirations, while questioning how far AI can be asked to recognize, learn and honor universal values as its own.
