We are unlearning things we never should have forgotten. I don’t say this as someone who rejects modernity. It is quite the opposite. I have worked in technology for more than twenty years, always defending innovation and digital transformation. And because I live fully inside this world, I feel an even stronger responsibility to defend the ethical, conscious and human use of the tools we create.

In recent years, I have immersed myself in the field of artificial intelligence governance. I spend my days surrounded by screens, dashboards, models and reports. Technology is so present in my routine that I sometimes catch myself thinking about the time when we memorized phone numbers, knew routes by heart, wrote pages and pages by hand, summarized entire chapters and did math at the grocery store without a calculator. This is not empty nostalgia. It is the reminder of a time when our brain had to work alone, without autocomplete, without GPS and without an algorithm suggesting our next move.

This contrast made something clear to me. Technological progress requires ongoing reflection about responsibility, not only admiration for efficiency. We are used to celebrating what technology can do, but we rarely stop to discuss what it should or should not do.

I worry about this, especially in education. I see students using AI tools in brilliant ways, yet struggling to sustain a thought process without assistance. They produce impeccable texts with generative AI, but have difficulty handling the discomfort of a hard conversation, constructing an argument, expressing an opinion or speaking while looking someone in the eye. Little by little, we lose mental, emotional and even physical strength.

There is nothing wrong with using AI to study. The problem begins when it replaces critical thinking. Ethical use is exactly about this. It means treating technology as an extension of human ability, not as a substitute for our capacity to think. An AI tool can explain a complex physics concept, but it should not be used to plagiarize an assignment. It can support writing, but it cannot eliminate the effort of forming original ideas.

A simple example: Ethical is asking AI to explain a physics concept in simple terms. Not ethical is asking AI to write the entire assignment and turning it in as your own.

And what if the internet went out tomorrow? A real digital blackout where every tool we rely on suddenly stopped. How would we cook a basic meal without an online recipe, do math without a calculator, find an address using a physical map or write a full text by hand with a coherent beginning, middle and end?

This is not only about practice. It is about autonomy. It is about knowing that if everything fails, you can still find your way. These tiny skills reveal who we are. Lighting a fire, tying a knot, riding a bike without fear, jumping rope, writing in your own handwriting and having a long conversation without looking at your phone. Simple things that anchor us to the real world and remind us that living is not only clicking, dragging, sending, opening and sharing. Living is also feeling the ground, noticing time, embracing pauses and practicing patience.

Working with artificial intelligence, I often notice a paradox. The more advanced machines become, the more fragile we become without them. AI completes sentences, organizes ideas and suggests next steps. It seems unstoppable, yet it will never feel the pride of doing something with your own hands, the passion that drives a project’s purpose, the anxiety of not knowing what comes next or any of the emotions that make our lives deeply human.

This is why ethics matters. Not only to regulate risks, but to remember that every technology must serve humanity. Never the other way around.

If we let ourselves be carried away by the fascination for powerful tools, we risk forgetting the value of experiences that cannot be automated. How good it feels to live outside autopilot, and how much we should value every moment because these moments make up our entire life.

Using technology ethically means not outsourcing your own conscience, questioning where data comes from and why it is being used, being skeptical of what feels too easy and understanding that being able to do something does not automatically mean we should do it.

Disconnecting in order to enjoy the moment and engage with the world using our own hands is not a step backward. It is a return to ourselves.

In the end, the real challenge is not adapting technology to our lives. It is ensuring that while machines become more intelligent, we do not forget to remain human.