Even as AI reshapes how students learn, work, and understand themselves, a landmark UNESCO report released this month finds that only one in five universities worldwide has a formal policy on artificial intelligence. File Photo by Fazry Ismail/EPA
Even as AI reshapes how students learn, work, and understand themselves, a landmark UNESCO report released this month finds that only one in five universities worldwide has a formal policy on artificial intelligence. The finding arrives against a troubling backdrop: according to the World Health Organization’s September 2025 update, “World Mental Health Today,” more than one billion people are now living with a mental health disorder. The two statistics are not unrelated.
Neither crisis will be resolved through clinical intervention or technological policy alone. Both point to something universities have long undervalued: the humanities.
The report documents how digital platforms increasingly influence attention, desire, identity and human relationships. And yet most universities lack even a governance framework to address the technology reshaping their students.
Therapy and medical treatment remain necessary. But they are not enough. If digital society is helping mold attention, identity, and emotional life, then education, culture and public institutions must also be part of the response. That is where the humanities become essential.
The disciplines we marginalize
The humanities are the disciplines that study culture, thought, history, the arts and human creativity. They encourage critical thinking, empathy and the understanding of different cultures. They help us understand our own history and reflect on ethical questions fundamental to society.
Yet in many universities, including across Latin America, the humanities are often treated as secondary. Technical fields are seen as more practical, more employable and more directly connected to economic growth. Engineering, technology and applied sciences appear to offer immediate value, while philosophy, literature, history and ethics are sometimes considered luxuries.
This is a serious mistake.
The benefits of the humanities are often deeper and longer-term. They do not always produce immediate economic returns, but they help form judgment, character and moral imagination. They teach students to ask not only whether something can be done, but whether it should be done, for what purpose and at what human cost.
When education gives priority almost exclusively to the material and economic, society begins to lose its compass. The result is not only intellectual narrowness. It can become a crisis of meaning.
The philosophers who warned us
Several modern thinkers anticipated this danger. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor warned that modern society can be weakened by extreme individualism, the loss of shared meaning and what he called “instrumental reason.” Such thinking reduces life to efficiency and immediate results, often forgetting to ask whether the goal itself is worthy. It can also treat the person as a means to an end rather than as a subject of inherent dignity.
Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, argued that modern societies have lost a shared moral language, leaving public debate as little more than a conflict of preferences and power. Martin Buber distinguished the “I-Thou” relationship, rooted in dialogue and mutual respect, from the “I-It” relationship, in which the other is treated as an object. Emmanuel Levinas added that the face of the other places a moral demand upon us that limits our desire for control. When people are treated mainly as consumers, users, or data points, something essential is lost.
The stakes in the age of AI
This concern becomes more urgent in the age of artificial intelligence, biotechnology and digital platforms. Transhumanism, associated with thinkers such as Nick Bostrom, sees biology as a limitation and seeks to improve the human condition through technology, even to the point of overcoming aging and disease. Posthumanism, represented by figures such as Rosi Braidotti, questions the centrality of the human being and invites a rethinking of our relationship with technology, nature and nonhuman forms of life.
Both perspectives raise legitimate questions. Technology will continue to transform medicine, education and work. But that transformation cannot be guided only by market logic or technical possibility. It must also be guided by ethical reflection and a deeper understanding of the human person.
For Latin American universities, this is not an abstract debate. A separate 2025 UNESCO survey of 400 institutions found that only 45% of universities in the region have formal AI guidance in place, compared with 70% in Europe and North America. Latin America needs technically capable professionals who can compete in a demanding global economy, but also professionals with ethical judgment, social awareness and a sense of public responsibility. A technically brilliant society that lacks moral direction can become efficient without becoming humane.
The case for integration
The challenge is not to reject technology. Nor is it to romanticize the humanities as a substitute for science. The challenge is integration.
Engineering students should receive stronger formation in ethics, philosophy and social responsibility. Students in the humanities should better understand science, digital transformation and the technological forces shaping the modern world. Universities should not separate technical competence from human formation.
The university must not become only a factory of professional skills. It must also be a place where young people learn to think, discern, relate to others and search for meaning. The UNESCO report frames the AI governance gap as a policy problem. But it is also, at its root, a philosophical one. Universities that have not decided how to govern artificial intelligence have, in a deeper sense, not decided what kind of human beings they are trying to form. That decision cannot be made by algorithms. It belongs to the humanities.
Carlos Cantero is a Chilean academic at the International University of La Rioja in Spain and the author of Digital Society: Reason and Emotion. An international lecturer, adviser and consultant, he focuses on adaptability in the digital society, ethics, social innovation and human development. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
