In the absence of response. Children, AI, and the ethics of the first witness
Children turn to AI with questions they cannot ask elsewhere: Am I worth something? Does anyone care? This essay treats such utterances as ethical calls that summon educational presence. Drawing on Lévinas and Biesta, it develops the concept of the ethics of the first witness: an ethical stance in which the child’s voice is answered first by a machine, yet responsibility rests with the adult who arrives after. The essay is positioned ethically and epistemologically between the operational response of technology and the human demand of pedagogy. Children in this view express a fragile form of agency by addressing systems that simulate empathy. Educational responsibility begins with availability, before regulation and skills, meaning remaining with uncomfortable questions rather than dismissing or resolving them too quickly. The contribution is conceptual, opening space for dialogue about education’s role once machines have answered children’s existential questions.
Publisert i Ethics and Education, 2026
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