What Does Tolkien Have to Do with Artificial Intelligence

I'm reading a book: The Hobbit and Philosophy by Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson.

On the surface, it might sound like a heavy treatise aimed at digging into the deepest unspoken corners of The Hobbit and the psychology of its author, but that's not quite the case.

Let's start from the beginning: I decided to buy and read this book because its subtitle completely won me over: "Some hints for not losing your way, the wizard, and the dwarves", I couldn't resist.

The philosophy angle did make me a little nervous, because I'm not someone who has ever dedicated herself to "classical" studies, even though I came into contact with them and they shaped my life as the daughter of an archaeologist and a teacher, the sister of a speech therapist, and the descendant of a dynasty of teachers.

I have to say, though, it really surprised me.

For me, a good book or a good article has to make me think and offer reflections that lead me to look at the real world in a different way, and the approach of the two authors certainly hit the mark. But this isn't a book review, so why am I talking about it here?

Because I read something that brought me not only into the real world, but into the exact historical period we are living through with AI.

Tolkien and Technology

Tolkien did not live in a period that we would consider strictly technological

(for those of us in 2026, technology means digital; in the 1930s and 1940s, technology meant engineering and machines), yet it was a time of extreme upheaval, caused both by the two great wars and by the engineering boom that followed. Tolkien was a brilliant man, a product of his time, whom we certainly cannot describe as a lover of industrial innovation.

The book starts from his hostility toward the rise of machines and arrives at a broader reflection on the relationship humans have with new technologies. Here is an excerpt:

"Like magic, technology accelerates and amplifies the effect of our actions on the world [...] our desire for speed, power, and control outpaces our ability to think responsibly about long-term consequences and deep values."

Tolkien says:

"[...] the most widespread presumption of our times: that if something can be done, it must be done."

The author concludes:

"[...] Has our wisdom perhaps kept pace with technology?"

Extremely and objectively relevant, don't you think?

If Something Can Be Done, Is It Right to Do It?

I found these words extremely timely, especially when we think about the AI boom we have experienced in recent years: a potentially magnificent technology (just as machines could have been in Tolkien's time), yet one that was launched onto the market in a destructive way without giving people time to adapt to it.

And so we ended up with:

• fake news raining down everywhere
• a loss of credibility for public news organizations (with the pressure to be first, information is often wrong or incomplete)
• deepfakes that destroy people's lives
• content that is now difficult to identify as real
• anyone able to write a polished text without citing sources or without worrying about creating quality content

On the other hand, AI can:

• give people without specific technical skills the chance to bring their ideas to life
• support study and education through models designed for schools
• speed up tedious work tasks
• improve communication between people from different countries and languages, even without specific linguistic knowledge
• accelerate and expand medical research, thanks to models trained to identify specific diseases and predict how they will develop well in advance

The fact that AI can be used for ethically questionable purposes for personal gain does not mean it is right to do so, regardless.

The AI Act

We have seen this in many other situations. Think about the arrival of electric scooters: first the technology arrived and spread incredibly fast without regulation; then the problems came, including very serious accidents.

I also bought an electric scooter (used it 3 or 4 times) and, along with it, I bought a helmet. A friend told me: "why are you buying it? It's not mandatory", exactly.

No, nobody forces me to, but the scooter can reach 25 km/h, and falling at that speed is already unpleasant. But what if a car barely touches me, I fall, and there is a sidewalk, a pole, another car, and I hit my head without a helmet? I pay the price because nobody required me to wear one. Do you see how flawed that reasoning is?

If AI allows us to do things that are potentially harmful to others, the absence of prohibitions is not permission. We should be the first to set limits for ourselves, don't you think?

The AI Act arrived precisely for this reason: to set limits and start teaching us how to use this vast, multifaceted technology more responsibly, both for ourselves and for the people around us.

Because then it is pointless to complain about fake news when we are the first not to bother rereading the content AI suggests to us or to verify the news we read in the big headlines on Instagram posts.

Conclusion

Yes, we could talk about these topics for hours, but I don't think you would stay here listening to my flights of fancy.

Here I do not want to judge anyone, precisely because I am convinced that AI is a great tool when used correctly, just like a car, a baseball bat, an electric scooter, a pen, or a bicycle.

But we must have the awareness to use these tools in an ethically correct way, even if nobody fines us for doing otherwise.

In the meantime, I wonder: what would Tolkien think if he found himself discussing the events of Middle-earth with ChatGPT, or if he asked Gemini for a fluent translation of an article into Elvish? Fortunately, perhaps, we will never know.