The idea that individuals should be free to use AI however they want assumes harm is always clear and direct, but many AI risks are diffuse, systemic, or delayed — like misinformation, deepfakes, privacy violations, or biased decision-making. By the time harm is visible, it can already be widespread and difficult to reverse. Ethical guardrails aren’t about restricting personal freedom arbitrarily; they’re about setting shared boundaries for technologies whose misuse can affect trust, safety, and democratic systems even when individual users don’t intend harm.