By Guardian staff reporter
Publication Date: 2026-04-01 16:50:00
Your article about the school bombing in Iran rightly questions the reflex to blame artificial intelligence (AI was blamed for the school bombing in Iran. The truth is far more worrying, March 26). However, the deeper problem lies not with the technology but with the language that is now forming around it. Saying there was an “AI error” tacitly removes the human subject from the sentence. Where civilians were once “dismantled” or caused “collateral damage,” responsibility has now been shifted entirely: from the people to the systems.
This is important because moral responsibility depends on clarity about it WHO actions. No matter how complex the analysis and chain of command, it remains the people who design, authorize and execute these decisions. Hiding this fact is not a technical error but a civic one.
AI may be accelerating warfare, but it is also accelerating a subtler shift: from euphemism to automation as an alibi. If public language cannot name human responsibility, public control cannot capture it…
