At SEDE we always encourage active thinking and we leave room for conceptual reflection to conceive the development model desirable as a society, and to this end we would like to discuss about the position that human beings should have in modern times marked by digitalization and the data-driven society. The debate can be extended to the confrontational relationship between humanism and science in contemporaneity, and the bridges built for its coexistence.

Ongoing research on Ethical Artificial Intelligence is based on classical principles of humanism, fostering a human-cantered approach of technical development. The aim is not to hinder technical progress or to slow down evolution, but rather to conserve the benefits of digital innovation while mitigating potential harm. Responsible digital innovation alerts us to the main drawbacks and challenges for humans in digital transformation, such as the social division and dehumanization, the consequences derived from the excessive surveillance and control, excessive number of maladjusted workers, lack of developed framework for the integration of human-machine interaction or the need to provide society with spaces for debate to understand and integrate the digital changes (mitigating the anguish of the time lapse for assimilation for inherent constant digital renewal).

Ethics appears as a counterforce of limitless technical innovation, but which role does science play? Hanna Arendt has already dealt with this topic in his famous article “The conquest of space and the stature of man”, a substantial reflection about science and its purpose. Technical production is often inspired by scientific approach for exploration of the available elements seeking “for what lies behind natural phenomena as they appear to senses and to the mind of man”. A more transhumanist vision that ends up producing everything that is technically possible, through enrichment by renewal and solutionism. Does it mean that science finds meaning by reducing existential questioning? Is a reconciliation of science and humanism still possible?

This is what N. Katherine Hayles discusses in her book "Unthought". For Hayles, the classical vision of humanity grants a higher level of consciousness to human beings, something that places them in a privileged position on the planet. However, the author exposes the importance of the cognitive nonconscious, which humans share with other species, including plants, animals or even technical systems. Therefore, a communication between consciousness and the "new" unconscious is established to form an assemblage, a so-called "Planetary cognitive ecology" that allows the construction of a cognitive assemblage where the humanities take a different path to Homo sapiens, focusing their research through more intensive and pervasive interconnections with other nonconscious cognizers.

Our vision strengthens integration and respect for biodiversity and technological innovation that energises our society. However, contextualising the uniqueness of the human being in the universe, we must not lose a humanistic perspective that addresses the contemporary problems of our species and for which the engagement of a model is necessary in which the needs of belonging and community coexist with those of privacy and human fulfilment.