We have grown accustomed to a digital diet of the extraordinary. Every day, as I scroll through my social media feeds, I am bombarded by images of what are claimed to be Non-Human Intelligences (NHI). The vast majority of these images are undoubtedly fabrications, cleverly crafted costumes, physical hoaxes, or the flawless algorithmic output of generative AI. Because of this saturation of the fake, we have developed a casual, almost flippant attitude toward these depictions. Yet, hidden within this digital noise, there exists the haunting possibility that some of these images are authentic. And this brings us to a profound ethical crisis: when we look at the image of a deceased, genuine non-human being, what happens to our sense of piety? Is it justifiable to display the dead, reducing an individual to a viral piece of content exposed to speculation, clinical discussion, and mockery?
This question forces me into a space of deep self-reflection. I must confess that in the past, I too have succumbed to the temptation to share and utilize these images on my personal social media channels. It is easy to justify it to oneself under the banner of curiosity, the pursuit of truth, or the excitement of the disclosure era. But this unreflective engagement with the remains of living forms that are closely connected to us, beings that are turned toward us in a shared cosmic reality, is something we must urgently re-examine. We must ask ourselves whether our thirst for knowledge, our desperate need to validate the biggest secret in human history, justifies the total exposure and desecration of a biological entity.
Philosophically, this dilemma touches upon the very core of what piety means, and how far its boundaries extend. Traditionally, human societies afford dignity to the dead not for the sake of the corpse itself, but out of respect for the conscious life that once inhabited it and the community left behind. If we acknowledge an NHI as a sentient, intelligent being that stands in a deep relationship with humanity, then our ethical obligations cannot logically stop at the boundary of our own species. To claim that a being deserves dignity while alive but can be treated as a mere object of curiosity when dead is a philosophical contradiction. Our epistemological hunger, the right to know, frequently clashes with ontology, the respect for being itself. Does our need for answers give us ownership over the dignity of those who share a bond with us?
This is not entirely a new problem; we have seen this moral shortcut in our own history. Think of the human remains displayed in museums worldwide, mummies from ancient Egypt, bog bodies, or the ancestral remains of indigenous peoples stripped from their graves during the height of colonialism. We often operate under the unspoken rule that temporal distance erodes piety. The older the corpse, or the more culturally detached it is from our modern Western paradigm, the more we feel entitled to look, measure, and display. But this is an illusion born of emotional detachment, and it becomes even more critical when dealing with those close to us.
Are we now so thoroughly desensitized by the digital age that the image of a deceased being, such as the deeply troubling footage released last September of a Tall White female, elicits nothing more than algorithmic engagement? In our rush to analyze anatomy, we completely bypass the emotional reality of what we are looking at. We are looking at a corpse of someone who belonged to a species aligned with our own journey.
If these leaks are genuine, we must confront a heartbreaking reality: this woman lived within family-like structures, felt bonds of affection, and had individuals who loved and mourned her. By transforming her final, vulnerable state into a sensational leak for online debate, we do not just analyze data; we actively violate her memory and the grief of those she left behind. We reduce a life of consciousness to a digital trophy, ignoring the fact that she represents an ally.
Navigating this ethical minefield is one of the most vital tasks of the ongoing disclosure process. True disclosure is not merely a political or scientific milestone; it is a test of our collective mental and spiritual maturity. It is a mirror reflecting how we intend to treat our cosmic neighbors, not as resources, threats, or curiosities, but as peers and allies in existence. If we cannot show reverence to their dead, we demonstrate that we are not yet mature enough to meaningfully engage with their living. Piety cannot be selective. If it does not extend across the boundaries of species and stars, especially toward those who are close to us, then it isn’t piety at all; it is just tribalism.
