Lisbon, June 16, 2026 (Lusa) - The Portuguese president has warned that the country and the European Union cannot adopt a “passive attitude” towards technology and artificial intelligence, noting that, at European level, it seems we have not yet moved beyond the “analogue world”.
At the closing session of the Diário de Notícias Annual Conference, held at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, on Monday evening, António José Seguro spoke about technology, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, noting that “countries that know how to incorporate these technologies into their businesses and society will emerge stronger”, whilst “the others will be left queuing at the supermarket”, that is to say, they will be “countries with the status of an ordinary consumer”.
“In my view, this is one of the reasons why Portugal and the European Union cannot afford to be passive. They cannot wait years to move forward with a plan aimed at making up for lost ground. With a touch of irony, European sluggishness is paradoxical in a world where the pace is dizzying. It seems as though it has not yet left the analogue world behind,” he warned.
For the president, the technological issue is not merely economic, but “also political and civilisational”.
Seguro warned that this issue “exacerbates the effects of changes in relations between states” and that the absence of rules “could provide fertile ground for the proliferation of new technological tools and networks with offensive strategies”.
“On the other hand, we live in an era where algorithms influence our choices. Perhaps more seriously, disinformation is produced on an industrial scale and tailored to each individual,” he noted, arguing that cybersecurity is no longer a technical issue, but rather “a central dimension of state sovereignty”.
It is in this context of “industrial-scale disinformation” that the president described quality journalism as “a critical pillar of democracy”.
“Without free journalism, there is no scrutiny of power, no quality debate, and no citizens with the information they need to make informed decisions. The quality of our democracy also depends on the quality of the journalism produced, and the country must seriously assess what it wants to do and the values it wishes to uphold in order to have free and pluralistic journalism,‘ he maintained.
The president shared with the audience an experiment he conducted with a language model, to which he made a request: ’tell me the truth and nothing but the truth".
“The answer I received was sincere: ‘The truth, plain and simple: I am a language model. I am not a person; I have no experience or life outside this conversation, and I do not know for certain if I have anything that could be called feelings or a conscience’,” he read.
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