Artificial Intelligence, a new factor of geopolitical power

Every technological revolution has been accompanied by a promise: that of improving the human condition. So it was with the steam engine, which multiplied the productive capacity of industrial societies; with electricity, which transformed the organization of cities and industry; with computing, which automated tasks previously unthinkable; and with the Internet, which forever altered our way of communicating, accessing knowledge, and organizing the economy. Artificial intelligence represents the next great leap in that historical sequence, although with a substantial difference compared to all previous revolutions. While past technologies mainly expanded our physical capabilities or facilitated access to information, artificial intelligence is beginning to enter a territory that for centuries we considered exclusively human: the capacity to analyze, interpret, learn, create, and make decisions.

We find ourselves, probably, before the first technology capable of partially replacing functions inherent to human cognition. That statement, which just a decade ago would have seemed like an exaggeration typical of science fiction, constitutes an observable reality today. Artificial intelligence models draft legal reports, design buildings, develop computer code, perform assisted medical diagnoses, produce images with an extraordinary level of realism, translate between dozens of languages, synthesize scientific research, and are capable of passing academic tests that demand high levels of reasoning. What is most striking is that we are barely contemplating the beginning of this transformation.

The speed of its evolution is, in fact, one of the most disconcerting aspects of the phenomenon. Just a few years ago we were discussing whether a machine would be capable of maintaining a coherent conversation; today we debate to what extent it can replace certain intellectual professions. Various systems have surprised even their own developers by finding unforeseen solutions, optimizing strategies autonomously, or utilizing resources different from those for which they were initially designed. Although we are still far from general artificial intelligence, it is evident that technological evolution is advancing at a rhythm far superior to our political, legal, and social capacity to understand its implications.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in just five years, thousands of companies and startups dedicated exclusively to this sector have emerged. Never before had a technology concentrated such a volume of investment in so short a period. The enthusiasm is such that numerous economists are already warning about the possibility of a new technological bubble, comparable in some aspects to the one experienced during the rise of the Internet in the late nineties. Perhaps a financial bubble exists; perhaps not. However, even if part of that capital ends up disappearing, technological change is already irreversible. Artificial intelligence has ceased to be a promise of the future to become a strategic infrastructure of the present.

Precisely for this reason, I believe we are asking the wrong questions.

During recent years, public debate has been dominated by undoubtedly relevant issues: the ethical risks of artificial intelligence, the potential biases of algorithms, copyright over the works used to train models, the protection of intellectual property, the use of images without consent, or the potential replacement of certain jobs. All these issues deserve attention and regulation. It would be irresponsible to ignore them. However, focusing the conversation almost exclusively on these aspects implies leaving aside a much more consequential question: what do we really want artificial intelligence for?

I have the impression that we have reduced one of the most powerful tools ever developed by humanity to an immense laboratory of entertainment and individual productivity. Millions of people daily use artificial intelligence systems to generate images, create humorous videos, transform photographs into illustrations inspired by recognizable artistic styles, write posts for social networks, or automatically reply to emails. There is nothing intrinsically negative about these applications. Every technological innovation begins by finding seemingly trivial uses before expanding into more complex areas. The Internet also started as a space to share emails and personal pages before becoming the core infrastructure of the global economy.

The problem does not lie in the fact that we use artificial intelligence to have fun, but rather that it seems we have decided to settle for that.

While we dedicate enormous computational capacities to producing spectacular images or viral content, we continue to face some of our society's greatest challenges through procedures practically identical to those of several decades ago. The paradox is hard to ignore. Never before had we possessed a tool with such capacity to process information, detect patterns invisible to human beings, and anticipate complex scenarios, and yet there is barely any serious public discussion about how to turn that potential into an authentic State policy.

Europe constitutes an especially revealing example of this contradiction.

Every summer we witness the same sequence. Thousands of forest hectares disappear under fire. Entire municipalities are evacuated. Thousands of emergency personnel are mobilized. Economic losses amount to hundreds of millions of euros and, on too many occasions, we must also mourn fatalities. When the summer season ends, political leaders promise to reinforce prevention for the following year. However, when the next summer arrives, we find that the problem persists with growing intensity.

It is inevitable to wonder why we continue to understand prevention as a set of reactive actions when we already have technologies capable of radically transforming this approach.

Artificial intelligence could integrate real-time weather information, historical rainfall indices, soil moisture, atmospheric pressure, wind direction and intensity, forest density, satellite imagery, topographic maps, vegetation evolution, human activity, and even data from sensors distributed across the territory to build predictive models capable of identifying risk zones days or weeks in advance. This is not a futuristic hypothesis. Predictive algorithms have already been used for years by power companies to anticipate energy demand, by railway operators to detect breakdowns before they occur, by financial institutions to prevent fraud, and by logistics companies to optimize millions of distribution routes daily.

The technological capacity exists. What does not seem to exist is the political will to turn it into a strategic priority.

And forest fires constitute only one example among many others.

Public healthcare could use artificial intelligence to anticipate medication needs, optimize the distribution of hospital resources, identify epidemiological patterns before they evolve into health crises, or plan prevention campaigns with unprecedented precision. Educational systems could detect early on factors associated with school dropout and design specific interventions before the problem materializes. Public administrations could drastically reduce bureaucracy, automate repetitive procedures, detect administrative inefficiencies, and allocate public resources using evidence-based models rather than solely political inertia.

Agriculture could anticipate pests, optimize water and fertilizer consumption, and increase productivity while reducing environmental impact. Urban mobility policies could be designed based on millions of data points collected in real time, optimizing public transport and reducing pollutant emissions. Even areas traditionally removed from digitalization, such as international cooperation for development, could benefit from predictive models capable of identifying execution risks, estimating probabilities of success, or improving the allocation of financial resources.

In all these cases, artificial intelligence would cease to be a simple technological tool to become an authentic instrument of governance—that element so promised in Smart Cities.

And yet, these possibilities barely occupy any space in the political debate.

We remain fascinated by the capacity of artificial intelligence to answer questions, write texts, or generate images, but we show much less interest in using it to answer far more complex questions: where to build a hospital, how to anticipate a water crisis, which areas require greater educational investment, or which public policies will produce a greater social impact ten years from now.

Perhaps the problem is not technological... Perhaps the problem is cultural...

For too long we have understood innovation as a process oriented almost exclusively toward the market. We develop whatever generates immediate profitability, whatever attracts venture capital investment, or whatever gains millions of users in a few weeks. That logic is understandable from a business perspective, but deeply insufficient from a social perspective. History demonstrates that great technological transformations reach their maximum potential when they stop responding solely to commercial interests and become integrated into long-term collective projects.

There is also another especially worrying aspect. As artificial intelligence gains the capacity to generate convincing answers, the concern of many citizens to verify the quality of the information they receive decreases. A dangerous tendency has set in to accept any result produced by an algorithm as if it constituted an objective truth. However, artificial intelligence does not think; it processes information. And the quality of its answers will inevitably depend on the quality of the data with which it has been trained and the critical capacity of the person using it.

Therefore, the authentic challenge consists not only in developing increasingly sophisticated models, but in educating citizens capable of questioning, contrasting, and contextualizing the information produced by these systems. Artificial intelligence does not eliminate the need for critical thinking; it converts it into an even more indispensable competence.

Meanwhile, the great powers have understood perfectly what is at stake. The United States and China no longer consider artificial intelligence solely as a high-value-added economic sector, but as a matter of national sovereignty, industrial competitiveness, security, and geopolitical leadership. The race for the dominance of algorithms increasingly resembles the great technological competitions of the 20th century, with one fundamental difference: the strategic resource is no longer oil or steel, but information.

For decades we repeated that whoever controlled energy reserves would control the world. That statement defined a good part of contemporary geopolitics. However, the 21st century seems to be progressively replacing that logic with another much more complex one. Today the most valuable resource is not oil. It is the capacity to generate data, interpret it, convert it into knowledge, and use it to anticipate decisions before anyone else. Information has become the raw material of the new economy, and artificial intelligence is the most powerful mechanism ever developed to transform it into a strategic advantage.

For that reason, the true debate about artificial intelligence should not be limited to asking ourselves what risks this technology poses, but what model of society we want to build with it. We can continue using it mainly to automate routine tasks, generate ephemeral content, or feed digital platforms designed to capture our attention. Or we can accept that we face a historical opportunity to rethink the way we manage our resources, protect our environment, design public policies, and confront collective challenges whose complexity has long surpassed exclusively human analytical capacity.

Artificial intelligence will not solve the world's problems on its own. No technology ever has. Tools lack will; they only amplify the priorities of those who use them. Precisely for this reason, the most important question consists not in asking ourselves how far artificial intelligence will go, but how far we are willing to take our political imagination.

Because perhaps the greatest failure of this technological revolution would not be that machines came to think like human beings. The true failure would consist in possessing the most powerful tool ever created to understand complex systems and continuing to use it, overwhelmingly, to solve trivial problems. History would hardly forgive us for having confused a revolution of knowledge with a simple digital entertainment factory.

We are still in time to choose another path. But that decision no longer depends on algorithms. It depends exclusively on us.

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Wesley Sá Teles Guerra is an expert in internationalization, international cooperation, and paradiplomacy, with a solid academic background from internationally renowned institutions. He is the founder of CERES – Centro de Estudos das Relações Internacionais (Center for International Relations Studies) in Brazil, and currently serves as the manager of the Triangular Cooperation Fund between Europe, Latin America, and Africa at the Ibero-American General Secretariat, based in Madrid.

Throughout his academic and professional career, he completed studies in International Negotiations at the Centre de Promoció Econòmica de Barcelona; in International Relations and Political Science at the Fundação Escola de Sociologia e Política de São Paulo; a Master’s Degree in Social Policies and Migrations at the Universidade da Coruña (UDC); an MBA in International Marketing at the Massachusetts Institute of Business; a Master’s Degree in Smart Cities at the Universitat Carlemany; a course in European Project and Fund Management at the Universidad Internacional de Andalucía (UNIA); and he is currently a PhD candidate in Sociology at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED).

He is the author of the works Cadernos de Paradiplomacia, Paradiplomacy Reviews, and Manual de sobrevivência das Relações Internacionais. He regularly participates in international forums on smart cities, global governance, and paradiplomacy, and has also been an invited commentator on CBN Recife. He was a finalist for the ABANCA Academic Research Award and is a member of international networks and platforms such as CEDEPEM, ECP, Smart Cities Council, and REPIT, maintaining an active involvement in international initiatives linked to cooperation, innovation, and governance.