In our phones, on our networks, even in the most mundane gestures of our daily lives, AI has imposed itself with disconcerting speed. We have adopted it without the slightest hesitation, succumbing to the allure of convenience, without ever probing what it demands in return. Yet, on a land like Haiti, where no law protects personal data, and where our mother tongue remains foreign to tools shaped under different skies, such trust cannot go without consequence. This tribute is paid in three stages.
First, a technology embraced long before it is understood. Next, ethics sacrificed on the altar of convenience: consent never truly gathered, intimacy freely offered, a responsibility that no one claims. Finally, the peril of seeing today’s ease turn into a permanent servitude. A trap all the more formidable as it silently closes in on those who believed they were only simplifying their existence.
A technology embraced before being understood
For most of us, AI is a window for dialogue: you pose a question, and a clear and assured response emerges. Nothing in this apparent simplicity hints at the mechanism that drives it. This is precisely where its hidden face lies.
Contrary to what its name suggests, AI does not think. It grasps neither the meaning of our words nor the reality they denote. It calculates, from colossal amounts of texts and images, the most probable continuation of what it is fed. The result is a deceptive eloquence: the machine can state an error with the same confidence as a truth, invent a source or a fact without ever acknowledging it.
The data that shaped it are no more neutral. They predominantly come from societies whose histories, languages, and concerns differ profoundly from ours. The tool therefore perceives the world through a prism that is not ours, and our realities occupy only a marginal place in it.
Finally, the apparent free access it offers is just that—apparent. Every request, every document entrusted, every piece of information shared in the course of a conversation can feed into systems we know nothing about: where this information is stored, for what purposes? For how long? When the service is free, it is often the user who becomes the product.
Understanding these mechanisms does not mean rejecting the tool, but rather ceasing to grant it trust that it has yet to earn. We do not master what we do not know. And it is in this ignorance that the first breach of the trap opens.
Ethics sacrificed on the altar of convenience
Ethics in AI is not an abstraction reserved for philosophers. It consists of a few simple principles that everyone should know before entrusting anything to a machine. Yet it is this knowledge that we lack the most.
The first of these principles is consent. To consent means to agree with informed awareness. However, few people read the terms of use they validate with a simple gesture. We accept without knowing what we are accepting, and this consent retains only the name.
The second is respect for privacy. A photo, a voice message, a personal document submitted to an assistant to “save time” leaves our intimate sphere to join distant servers. Lacking an understanding of the implications, we give away much more about ourselves, and sometimes others, than we imagine.
The third is responsibility. When an AI makes a mistake, whether it’s erroneous health advice or false information circulated on networks, there must be someone who is held accountable. Where no law governs these uses, the question remains unanswered, and the user alone bears the consequences.
This ignorance is not a fault. It arises from a void: no school, no public campaign, no legal text has come to explain what is given up in exchange for convenience. Its effect is nonetheless formidable, for where no one knows their rights, no one thinks to defend them. And a habit taken without vigilance ultimately ends up enslaving us.
From today’s ease… to tomorrow’s servitude
The most insidious danger does not manifest suddenly. It installs itself gradually, as we delegate to machines what we once accomplished ourselves: writing a letter, summarizing a text, resolving a hesitation. Each delegation seems innocuous. Their accumulation, however, is not.
For a skill that is no longer exercised inevitably becomes dull. The student who entrusts their homework to AI learns to obtain an answer, not to construct one. The professional who relies entirely on it gradually loses the habit of doubting, verifying, and judging for themselves. What is gained in speed is lost in autonomy.
This loss is compounded by another fragility. The tools we rely on belong to distant companies that alone set the rules. They can change the conditions, restrict access, or raise the price overnight. Those who can no longer function without them have no choice but to comply.
Being aware of this mechanism is already a way to guard against it. A few simple reflexes suffice: never entrust to AI what you would not confide to a stranger, verify any important information with a reliable source; exercise your own reasoning before seeking the machine’s help. Passing these practices on to our children, students, and loved ones is a matter of the same caution.
AI is neither an enemy nor a savior. It remains a tool, the value of which entirely depends on the lucidity of the one who employs it.
And a habit taken without vigilance eventually becomes a chain.
Where the law is silent, it is up to our conscience to speak. In the absence of texts to protect us, ethics cannot remain the prerogative of lawmakers or engineers: it becomes everyone’s business, the last bastion of those with no one to defend them. Respecting the intimacy of others, refusing to share what does not belong to us, demanding to understand before agreeing: these principles are not the luxury of prosperous nations, but the necessity of peoples who have no other guarantee than themselves. We who have wrested our freedom at the cost of blood cannot allow it to crumble, byte by byte, in indifference. The digital future of our children will not be decided in distant laboratories, but in each of our daily actions. It is up to us to ensure it remains theirs.
