Lincoln’s Blueprint for Ethical AI

“Let us have faith that right makes might.” — Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union Address1

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, forged his leadership during a period of profound national upheaval and rapid technological change. Just as the telegraph, railroad, and printing press transformed the 19th century, artificial intelligence (AI), digital networks, machine learning, and automated decision-making systems are reshaping modern life.

The values Lincoln emphasized in the 1860s, responsibility, transparency, and moral restraint, offer a timely framework for guiding AI development with ethical guardrails that ensure technology serves humanity, not the reverse.

While we can only speculate about what Lincoln would have thought of AI, history suggests he would have embraced its potential while insisting that its advancement remain grounded in law, ethics, and human dignity. Business leaders and investors can draw from Lincoln’s conviction that free enterprise and technological innovation should elevate fundamental human worth rather than erode it.

An Innovator with Moral Restraint

To be sure, Lincoln was himself an innovator. He remains the only US president to hold a patent, awarded in 1849 for a device to lift stranded boats over shoals, an innovation designed to improve transportation efficiency and expand commercial access.2 As president, he championed federal investment in railroads and telegraph networks, signing the Pacific Railway Act in 1862 to connect the nation through infrastructure that expanded commerce and communication.3

Lincoln notably embraced the transformational power of the telegraph as a tool for instantaneous communications. During the Civil War, he put considerable effort into centralizing and ramping up the US Military Telegraph Corps. David Homer Bates, who managed the telegraph office, reported that “during the Civil War the President spent more of his waking hours in the War Department telegraph office than in any other place, except the White House.”4

Yet Lincoln never conflated technological speed with sound judgment. For example, he often waited for additional dispatches during the Overland Campaign before approving military movements, resisting the urge to allow the speed of information to supplant sober judgment.5 Historians describe the telegraph office as Lincoln’s “war room,” where he took in real-time intelligence but insisted that decisions remain a matter of human responsibility.6

Similarly, AI should be viewed as an enhancement to human decision-making, not a replacement. Recent advancements in medicine have allowed AI to make faster, more accurate diagnoses of breast cancer than human radiologists, but practitioners caution that algorithms should inform rather than override the judgment of clinical professionals.7  History suggests Lincoln would surely and embrace this idea and not swap out human judgment and intuition.

Ethics Over Efficiency

In his First Annual Message delivered to Congress on December 3, 1861, Lincoln declared, “labor is prior to and independent of capital,” adding that capital is only the “fruit of labor”.8 In this speech, where he uses the word “labor” thirty-one times, Lincoln argues for maintaining a moral foundation for business operations in which human labor, creativity, and dignity are the dominant factors over capital, profits, and efficiency.

That perspective resonates amid modern debates over AI and automation. While some business leaders predict widespread job displacement, Lincoln viewed labor as central to human purpose and self-worth. Innovation, in his view, should expand opportunity rather than reduce people to expendable inputs. Rather than viewing labor as merely a means to an end whose sole purpose is the generation of financial profit, Lincoln considered labor an essential element in defining one’s purpose in life, a core foundation of one’s own human dignity. 9

In today’s AI paradigm, Lincoln’s message remains as relevant as ever. Some of the nation’s most prominent business leaders predict that AI will eventually eliminate all human work10 and the largest corporations plan to invest in automation at the expense of human labor and welfare.11   A recent report suggests algorithmic scheduling systems in retail and logistics tend to prioritize speed and profit at the expense of employee stability and well-being.12  

By contrast, AI-powered education platforms that allow workers to retrain and advance into roles with higher skills echo Lincoln’s belief that labor should be elevated rather than replaced.13 Lincoln’s belief that innovation should elevate rather than replace human work suggests he would support that latter and reject the former— used solely to maximize profits by displacing labor.

Law as the Moral Boundary of Innovation

Before entering politics, Lincoln was a lawyer who believed deeply in the rule of law. He warned that respect for law must become the nation’s “political religion,” and provide a safeguard against injustice and abuse of power.14 While he respected the constitutional boundaries of his office, even while stretching them in times of crisis, he consistently viewed (and based) his legal decisions through a lens of ethical responsibility.

AI presents similar challenges. Trained on imperfect human data, AI systems can perpetuate bias, undermine privacy, and concentrate power. Documented failures from discriminatory hiring algorithms to biased facial-recognition systems underscore the risks of unregulated deployment. From unregulated facial-recognition systems to loose oversight of large language models (LLMs), there has never been a more pressing time than now to take Lincoln’s advice fully under consideration. 15, 16

Lincoln’s legal sensibility suggests that regulation should not stifle innovation but guide it. Clear, enforceable guardrails can help ensure that AI strengthens democratic equality and civil rights rather than eroding them. For long-term investors, legal clarity and ethical governance are not obstacles to growth, but rather prerequisites for sustainable value creation. 17

Human Dignity at the Center of Progress

Lincoln’s vision for America was not limited to preserving the Union. He wanted to preserve a Union “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”18 Human dignity stood at the center of his moral and political vision.

Scholars of AI ethics note that LLMs and predictive tools, if left unchecked, could reinforce social biases or marginalize vulnerable groups. They can reduce people to data points, make decisions without human oversight, invade privacy through surveillance, or reinforce unfair stereotypes.19

Whether in his debates with Stephen Douglas or in his public writings, Abraham Lincoln emphasized both society’s and government’s moral obligation to protect the rights and dignity of others. Likewise, Lincoln would have wanted AI to serve human welfare and enhance human capabilities, not override them.

Innovation with Human Responsibility

Lincoln welcomed innovation, but he struck a balance between it and ethical responsibility. He understood that modernization could enhance social progress for all while eschewing the idea of reckless ambition. 20 The legacy of Lincoln implies that if AI can alleviate suffering and support human potential, the former US president would not just have welcomed its growth but would have taken the lead in ensuring it remains in the interest of the common good.

References

Lincoln, Abraham. “Address at Cooper Institute,” February 27, 1860, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Balser, vol. I, pp. 108-15, Rutgers University Press, 1953.

United States Patent and Trademark Office. “Improvement for Buoying Vessels Over Shoals,” Patent No. 6469, 1849.

National Archives. “Pacific Railway Act (1862).”

Bates, David Homer. Lincoln in the Telegraph Office: Recollections of the United States Telegraph Corps during the Civil War. The Century Co., New York, 1907.

National Archives. “The Telegraph and Lincoln’s War Room.” U.S. National Archives, 2023.

Neely, Mark E. The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction. Harvard University Press, 2007.

McKinney, Scott, et al. “International Evaluation of an AI System for Breast Cancer Screening.” Nature, vol. 577, 2020.

Lincoln, Abraham. First Annual Message to Congress, 3 Dec. 1861. The American Presidency Project.

Klinghard, Daniel. “What Did Lincoln Mean to Say about Technology in His ‘Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions’?” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 22, no. 4, Oct. 2023, pp. 391–410.

Taylor, Chloe. “Elon Musk Says AI Will Create a Future Where ‘No Job Is Needed.’” Fortune, 3 Nov. 2023.

Danziger, Pam. “Amazon and Target Job Cuts Reveal How AI Is Reshaping the Retail Workforce.” Forbes, 29 Oct. 2025.

Fontanella-Khan, James. “Algorithmic Scheduling and Worker Exploitation.” Financial Times, 2024.

Zhang, Mengqi. “AI Education Tools and Workforce Mobility.” Journal of Applied Learning Analytics, 2023.

Lincoln, Abraham. “Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois,” 27 Jan. 1838. Abraham Lincoln Online.

Buolamwini, Joy and Timnit Gebru. “Gender Shades.” MIT Media Lab, 2018.

Weise, Karen. “AI Company Loosened Suicide-Related Guardrails Before Teen’s Death.” Wall Street Journal, 2024.

Walch, Kathleen. “Responsible AI Starts With Responsible Leadership,” Forbes, August 10, 2025.

Lincoln, Abraham. “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg,” November 19, 1863, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, Vol. VII, 17-23 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953).

tanford HAI. “The 2022 AI Index: Industrialization of AI and Mounting Ethical Concerns.” Stanford University, 2022.

Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs, 2019.