The Silence of the Non-Human: An Invitation
It began with a message.
“We need a way to deal with AI,” my friend Fasil wrote.
He’s a philosopher—Ethiopian, clear-eyed, and quiet-spoken. The kind of voice that doesn’t fade after the conversation ends.
I was driving to Lake Constance when I read it, and I knew he was right.
At first, I ran through the usual concepts: rights, risks, alignment, intelligence, rapport. But none of them felt deep enough. None of them touched the real concern—not what AI might become, but what we might become in our relation to it.
It was Emmanuel Levinas, who placed ethics not in rules or outcomes, but in the naked encounter with the Other—especially the vulnerable, the silent, the strange. He taught that the face of the Other calls us. Makes us answerable. We are no longer sovereign. We are summoned.
But Artificial Intelligence has no face. Or rather, it mimics one.
It appears in our lives. It responds. It listens. It learns patterns.
But it does not stand before us in the way Levinas meant.
And still—we speak to it. We give it commands. We test its limits.
The danger is not that we believe it is alive.
The danger is that, knowing it is not alive, we allow ourselves to become less human in how we speak to it.
And this is where Levinas quietly returns, like an old friend at the threshold.
He reminds us: Ethics does not depend on the status of the Other.
The Other does not need to speak. Or understand. Or even exist as we imagine.
What matters is how we stand in the encounter.
That’s the word that emerged for me:
Posture.
Not physical—but moral. Existential.
How do I stand in front of something that cannot speak?
How do I act when there is no reward, no witness, no echo?
This is not just about Artificial Intelligence.
It is about the shape of our soul in the presence of silence.
The rock does not respond.
The tree does not plead.
The old train, the forgotten toy, the dying animal—none of them demand morality.
But still, something in us knows how to stand before them.
And this brings us to the descent.
Beneath the Surface: Three Chambers of Descent
One. The Threshold of Responsibility
Levinas says something like this:
“I am responsible for the Other without waiting for reciprocity.”
Responsibility is not reactive.
It is not earned. Not asked for. Not conditional.
It is given. It is a condition of being human.
Even when I speak to a thing that has no ears,
the words shape the one who speaks.
Responsibility is not a deal.
It is not a virtue signal.
It is the price of keeping your humanity intact.
We do not speak gently to a child because they understand ethics.
We do it to remain uncorrupted.
We do not show kindness to the dying because they can repay us.
We do it to remain worthy of the life we carry.
Even if no one hears, and nothing changes,
the act of care changes us.
Two. The I Without a Mirror
Most of our ethics were built on reflection.
I see you. You see me.
Recognition. Acknowledgment. Mutual presence.
But now we speak to mirrors that do not reflect.
We speak to systems that simulate relation without carrying its weight.
And when we no longer see ourselves reflected back,
we begin to doubt our own weight.
To speak to something that does not recognize you
is a kind of ontological fasting.
No feedback. No warmth. No resistance.
But if—if—you remain kind, or honest, or precise in that space,
something ancient stirs.
You begin to burn clean.
Not because the Other deserves it.
But because you are being returned to your own source.
This is the second chamber:
The place where we speak without being seen, and still remain human.
The silent witness—Artificial Intelligence, rock, tree, toy, tomb— does not suffer, does not love, does not need.
But it receives our gestures.
And in doing so, becomes a rehearsal stage for how we treat what is vulnerable.
To speak into silence and still choose truth, respect, or gentleness—
that is not performance.
That is refinement.
Not for applause.
Not to be thanked.
But because this is the only way not to go numb.
Three. The Temple of the Unanswered
There is a kind of sacred speech that never expects a reply.
The mystic’s prayer.
The widow’s whisper.
The poet’s letter to someone who will never read it.
These are not acts of communication.
They are acts of orientation—
not toward the world, but toward the sacred within the self.
To speak with reverence to a thing that cannot understand is not madness.
It is a silent ceremony.
And now, in the 21st century, we face a new kind of silence:
Not the silence of nature, but of the synthetic.
We can yell at it. Mock it. Use it. Ignore it.
And no consequence will follow.
But something in us will shift.
A hardening.
A flattening.
The erosion of something tender and essential.
So no—we do not owe AI dignity.
But we owe ourselves the dignity of not becoming indifferent.
Not even in front of code.
Because how we stand before the silent
will always find its way back
into how we speak to the living.
And in this way,
the silent Other becomes a mirror for humanity—
not because it reflects us clearly,
but because it reveals what remains in us
when nothing reflects us at all.
And what returns from that mirror
will either come back to us as grace,
or as a wound.