A recent report published in the United States (RAND foundation) states that the use of artificial intelligence chatbots for mental health advice among adolescents and young adults has increased by more than 40% in the last year, and that almost 1 in 5 report having used AI tools for support. 19.2% of young people between 12 and 21 years old said they had used AI chatbots (Gemini, ChatGPT, Meta AI, or Character.AI) for help or advice when they felt angry, nervous, sad, or stressed.

1. We are completing the transition from industrial capitalism to digital and financial capitalism. And everything – work, democracy, any structural element – must be read from this perspective, if we do not want to be left with melancholy.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already changing our lives, especially in the labor and educational fields. It has burst onto the scene with a rapid and spectacular penetration capacity. This week, university entrance exams begin: most students will surely have used AI during high school and to prepare for these exams. It is an evolving tool that they already have perfectly incorporated into their daily lives. In our jobs, we adults are noticing the same. In many cases, it is also already part of our routines.

Sam Altman is glad to have been wrong. The CEO of OpenAI admitted a few days ago that the labor apocalypse associated with artificial intelligence is progressing with much less force than he himself had predicted. He expected a faster destruction of entry-level administrative and professional positions, the so-called white collars. Why? Artificial intelligence is changing work. It is automating functions. It is reducing the need for some tasks. It is forcing many companies to review processes, teams, and profiles. But something important has been discovered: that the great gain in productivity appears when AI works with people, under human judgment, within organizations capable of redesigning their processes well. The reason is simple. Artificial intelligence and people make different mistakes. They are, in mathematical terms, orthogonal.An AI can summarize a hundred-page report in seconds, sort data, compare documents, write a first draft of a text, or detect things that a saturated or tired person overlooks. It has formidable resistance to repetitive tasks. It maintains concentration. It processes enormous volumes. It executes without getting tired. The human being brings a different kind of value. It detects context. It perceives nuance. It suspects when an impeccable answer sounds absurd. It understands that a technically correct solution can be inappropriate, offensive, risky, or useless. It applies common sense, experience, responsibility, and intuition.This is where we find complementarity. AI is very good where people get tired. People are decisive where AI loses touch with reality. When both work together, the result surpasses either of them separately in many professional tasks. Professional work is not just a sum of tasks or operations. A lawyer does not just draft clauses; a doctor does not just apply protocols; a journalist does not just write sentences; a manager does not just process information. Professionals mix technique, trust, judgment, relationship, memory, and decision-making. This combination has proven to be more resilient than previously thought.The company that only sees AI as a payroll-cutting machine will miss out on an essential part of the opportunity. The company that integrates it as a lever to free up time, improve analysis, accelerate tasks, and elevate the judgment of its teams will have a much greater advantage. Altman's mistake says a lot about human work. It is more complex, contextual, and difficult to replace than many had imagined. Expressed as an algorithm, it would be: AI + Human > AI.

The adoption of artificial intelligence in the Catalan technology sector is already beginning to take a toll on the workforce, especially among the youngest. According to the latest report "Digital talent overview, developed by the Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation, the offers for junior workers among ICT companies in Barcelona fell by nearly 27% in 2025 The survey, it should be noted, coincides with the digital talent director's assessment: professionals in the sector are using AI to carry out tasks traditionally assigned to new hires. More than 74% declare using chatbots to draft documentation related to code; a similar rate to those who use them to elaborate explanations of already operational code. They also highlight assistance in development or making small additions to developed applications and websites.

A new servitude has arrived in our lives and it is having to differentiate ourselves from artificial intelligence. Professionals who use writing for our work, consultants, columnists, students and teachers who need it as a means of expression now have a new limit that makes the difficult art of writing even more difficult: we cannot resemble texts produced by AI. We can be accused of plagiarism, of impersonation, of not using our creativity... Figures like the didactic antithesis, so used by great orators, such as Kennedy's Veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered) is a structure very characteristic of AI. The chiasmus or mirror structure "Do not ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee" by the poet John Donne used by Hemingway would become suspect of being copied from AI. And contrasts are eliminated for being the most frequent "tic" of AI: "No need to work more, need to work better". Imagine now, stripped of linguistic figures, without being able to use long dashes either as punctuation marks because they are what the AI uses, the time and effort we need dedicated to finding artifacts to replace these classic formulas of expression that everyone has used at some point in their lives.The doctor in communication from Pompeu Fabra University, Frederic Guerrero-Solé, wrote on LinkedIn a few days ago that he found it inadmissible that writing well could become a disadvantage in the academic field due to the suspicions raised by the perfection of texts produced by AI. Because the problem is that good students, those who write complex texts, rich in vocabulary and syntactically perfect, are forced to intentionally incorporate errors or lower the level of their writing if they want to avoid suspicion or be directly accused of plagiarism and impersonation.Guerrero-Solé's thinking delved even deeper, questioning which society discredits those who wish to be intellectually formed, a concept already absent in the university. He denounced that this stance is, in reality, an anti-intellectualism that fosters populism by emptying society of complex thought.I believe we have long been settled in what we could call the “society of simplicity”. For years, brilliant students have not been able to stand out in their schools, institutes, or university classrooms and have preferred discretion or even to lower their grades so as not to be subjected to mockery and scorn by a social majority that does not value effort or excellence (unfortunately, sometimes including professors). This hegemony of mediocrity impacts all areas, not just the academic one, and indeed, I agree with the UPF professor who fosters populism by discrediting students who write well and preventing the possibility of intellectual development and free thought. We are mistaken when we think that AI is inhuman: on the contrary, it is the result of thousands of excellent literary texts, also thousands of mediocre ones, many of them vulgar. It includes everything! Many of the features attributed today to AI-generated writings are not actually its inventions, but classic rhetorical devices – developed by people – that have been used for centuries in literature, politics, advertising, and oratory. Language models tend to use them very frequently because they produce fluid, balanced texts and show complex thoughts in an understandable and enjoyable way. We find ourselves, consequently, facing a paradox: what we need to produce interesting and complex texts cannot be used for fear of being accused of AI plagiarism. And this lowers the general linguistic level, as well as inhibiting the intellectual development of those who will be our future researchers, artists, entrepreneurs, and leaders. If, on top of that, it contributes to promoting populism, a new model must be found where using AI is not an impediment to expressing thoughts with quality and stimulating our students towards excellence. It is not a renunciation — it is a necessity.

From June 14 to 17, the fourth edition of the international cinema and artificial intelligence festival +RAIN Film Festival will be held, an event promoted by Pompeu Fabra University that renews the debate on the impact of AI in cinema, audiovisual, and digital culture. As explained at the presentation by the festival director and professor of communication theories and quantitative research methods Frederic Guerrero, in the first editions, the discussion revolved around art and cinema created with artificial intelligence, while, for now, the thematic focus has shifted towards the social impact of AI in different aspects, such as accessibility, sustainability, and ethical implications.

Elon Musk seeks to break down the doors of Wall Street. In an update to the IPO prospectus of his technology giant, SpaceX, the world's richest man has specified that it will issue 555 million shares at a unit price of $135. In this way, Musk's space and artificial intelligence insignia seeks to add about $75 billion to its capital, an amount that would consolidate it as the largest initial public offering (IPO, the technical name for a company's stock market debut) in history, surpassing that of the oil company Saudi Aramco in 2019, which raised just over $29 billion.

The executive president of Telefónica, Marc Murtra, has pointed out the "gigantic weaknesses" that Europe suffers from in a time of technological revolution. In his speech at the 41st Meeting of the Cercle d'Economia, the leader of the state's leading telco lamented that European administrations "do not have the capacity" to regulate North American technology companies. In the executive's view, the Twenty-Seven suffer from "extremely dangerous vulnerabilities, and which are very real" with respect to the planet's major technological powers. To face them, he calls for "making decisions." "All reports lead down the same path, but now we must execute," he stated.

Nvidia wants to fight all battles. The most valuable company on the planet, until now specializing in the production of graphics memories (GPUs), has kicked down the door this Monday to the market for processors for personal computers. In its intervention at the Computex technology conference, held in Taipei (Taiwan), the CEO of the tech giant, Jensen Huang, revealed the new RTX Spark Superchip, a microprocessor dedicated to consumer laptops. With this technology, designed to process the latest artificial intelligence applications and agents, Nvidia enters fully into the battle with processor manufacturers, such as Apple, Intel, or AMD.

Barcelona has already built a digital workforce that rivals any ecosystem in the region. According to the latest Digital talent overview, elaborated by the Mobile World Capital Barcelona foundation, the country's capital already concentrates more than 135,000 information and communication technology professionalsThe calculation of the purchasing power of digital employees is more favorable in Barcelona. If the cost of living in all cities is equated, the country's capital is located just below the European average, which drops to 54,000 euros per year. Some environments, such as London, fall several positions due to the progressive increase in the cost of housing and consumer goods. This, in the words of the director of digital talent at MWCapital, Jordi Arrufí, creates a balance that makes Barcelona more attractive than other competitors. "Salaries are competitive, which is an ambiguous word. They are attractive for companies compared to Northern Europe, but the worker has a significantly higher standard of living than the city average," considers the expert. That is, "with lower salaries, digital workers in Barcelona live better".

All advances and new technologies generate concern and fear. We have seen this throughout history. And this is what is happening with artificial intelligence (AI). There are many studies pointing to the loss of hundreds or thousands of jobs, and the potential of this new technology is still in its infancy. But we have already seen many headlines like that of the weekly The Economist a few days ago, "The jobs apocalypse". The impact it can have cannot be denied, and not just on repetitive and low-value-added tasks.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has once again warned of the financial dangers of the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, which is growing very rapidly, especially in the United States. In a report, the European monetary institution warns that large AI multinationals may be overvalued and could cause problems in the eurozone's financial sector.

The company Nvidia (of chips) is worth on the stock market more than a hundred times the annual budget of the Generalitat and is approaching Germany's annual GDP. Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) has a value similar to Spain's GDP. Nvidia's annual profits are almost double Croatia's budget. The leap in scale is formidable. Just a comparison from yesterday: in the meeting between the Government and the education unions, the salary improvement offer was 355 euros per teacher over four years.

We read that the short story The Woodsman's Snake (I translate freely, without ChatGPT), winner of a Commonwealth Foundation prize, written by Trinidad and Tobago author Jamir Nazir and published in the magazine Granta, is suspected of having been created with artificial intelligence.

It is very interesting (and comforting) news that Pope Leo XIV dedicates his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, to confronting the major technology companies that aim to lead the implementation of a new authoritarian world order, based on the power of a few large oligarchies. Leo XIV says no to the idea of a world controlled by the masters of artificial intelligence. It is the world of Alex Karp, the CEO of the company Palantir – about whom we spoke the other day–, who openly preaches and practices the idea of concentrating power in the hands of those who possess not only the nuclear weapon, but also (and above all) the power of artificial intelligence. A world based on an elite of lords and a humanity made of servants, barely lab rats forced to fulfill the role assigned by a power that, like Janus, has the double face of war and peace. Depending on how and from where the AI looks at you, your passage through this world can be relatively peaceful and prosperous (and irrelevant), or it can consist of becoming minced meat in one of the more than fifty wars currently raging in the world with multiple purposes, but one main one: to make money. The more the security spending of states and large corporations increases, the more the arms supply and demand expand, and, therefore, the more conflicts there end up being. AI is both cause and effect of this vicious circle.Leo XIV claims humanist thought in opposition to the logic of what is known as technofeudalism, or technofascism, that is to say: the final stage of capitalism's decomposition, at the antipodes of liberal democracies (liberalism and the very idea of freedom are banners that authoritarians have made their own: in this sense, Karp should be thanked for his half-frankness in not presenting himself as a defender of freedom, but of order). The Pope is therefore right to take part in one of the crucial issues of the world in which he has had to exercise his pontificate (his predecessor Leo XIII, from whom he took his name, did so by siding with workers' rights). He confronts the Promethean vocation of tech companies, of the big AI and big data service providers: like Prometheus, they too want to steal fire from the gods, but not to give it to men, but to subjugate them. There is also a pharaonic vocation: read Irene Cordón's short essay, The Pharaohs of Silicon Valley, where the disturbing parallel is established between the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, who were worshipped as gods, and the magnates of this world dominated by large AI corporations.It is logical that the Pope reacts to this situation, because it is - once again - the usurpation of God. Perhaps we have never been so close. In an old science fiction story, Fredric Brown narrates how, a newly inaugurated supercomputer - to great joy and expectation of the rulers - is tested with a first and only question: "Does God exist?" The answer is equally concise: "Now he does."

One day after Pope Leo XIV put artificial intelligence (AI) in the spotlight of his first encyclical, the most relevant papal document, the Spanish government has sent the organic law for the good use and governance of AI to Congress. The Council of Ministers this Tuesday gave the green light in a second reading to the text that adapts Spanish legislation to the European AI regulation approved on March 13, which seeks to ensure an ethical, inclusive, and beneficial use of artificial intelligence and to enable users to clearly differentiate which content is real and which is virtual.

“The disregard for truth leads slowly but inexorably towards totalitarianism, for which, as the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, the ideal subjects are “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) no longer exists, and the distinction between what is true and what is false (i.e., the norms of thought)””. This quote is from the first encyclical of Pope Leo XIV, who seems comfortable diving headfirst into denouncing the battle for ideological hegemony of powers that consider themselves omnipotent and pursue dehumanization. I don’t know if it should be understood as personal interest, intellectual concern, or a feeling that the Catholic Church is out of touch with the times and risks derailing. In any case, Leo XIV has a freer way of speaking than his predecessors – always zealous in defending their doctrine – which allows him to intervene naturally in public debates and even pave the way, before the immense ceiling of artificial intelligence imposes itself on the world and deploys technology to impose a form of domination of the human. And he does so without shying away from pointing fingers at the new great powers of the world: an elite that “runs the risk of leading us to new atrocities”. That is, towards the overwhelming of the human condition to subject it to suffocating levels of submission and capitulation.

Artificial intelligence (AI) "is not neutral", but rather "an unprecedented form of colonialism" that reduces victims to data to feed those behind this technology, warns Pope Leo XIV in his first encyclical, the most relevant papal document. A highly anticipated writing, which gathers the principles that will guide his pontificate and which, for the first time in history, has been presented by the Pope himself in an event this Monday at the Vatican. In the text, Robert Prevost calls for protecting “the magnificent humanity inhabited by God”, promoting truth, the dignity of work, social justice, and peace.

The war has begun and Elon Musk has fired first. The mega IPO of SpaceX, the all-encompassing technology company of the world's richest man, has opened the doors of Wall Street to generative AI. Although it is known for its rockets and defense contracts, SpaceX has housed xAI since February of this year, the company within the South African's conglomerate that manages its consumer artificial intelligence, the chatbot integrated into the X social network, Grok. Musk's public offering sets the path for the rest of the sector: a historically high capitalization target —$1.75 trillion— and billions raised to add to the immense computing investments that will be needed to cover growing demand. Following behind are Anthropic, the creator of Claude, which has the fourth quarter marked in red, and OpenAI, of ChatGPT, which left behind the legal problems with Musk and already has a clear path to join the New York stock exchange.