When the Other Dies, We Begin: Finitude, Intersubjectivity, and AI after Heidegger

Generative AI has revived the classical problem of intersubjectivity: if communication can be convincingly simulated, what still grounds the difference between human relations and relations with machines? Phenomenological accounts rely on an analogical inference from one’s own consciousness to that of the other, while sociological approaches dissolve the subject into communication. Neither explains why vulnerability, dependence, and loss bind lives together more strongly than the exchange of signs. This essay offers a critical reading of the analysis of death in Heidegger’s Being and Time. It argues that the death of the other brings one’s own finitude into view and thereby links separate lives through care and shared temporality—a structure I interpret as a reverse analogical apperception. The same analysis shows that the ontological difference cannot be maintained as a sharp separation and therefore cannot shield Heidegger’s thought from his antisemitism. The essay concludes with implications for human–AI relations and a critique of “immortalist” projects.