From Principles to Relationships: Redesigning Ethics for AI's Alien Cognition: Redesigning Ethics for AI's Alien Cognition - AI as Alien Intelligence: A Relational Ethics Framework for Human-AI Co-evolution

This paper introduces a novel paradigm for AI governance based on three interconnected concepts: (1) AI as fundamentally alien intelligence rather than emulated human cognition (Marro, 2504), (Anthropic, 2025); (2) ethics as a relational, co-evolutionary process rather than static rules (Wallach, 2009), (Piaget, 1932); and (3) the Ethics Security Model, a practical framework that balances adaptive oversight with procedural ethical baselines.
Unlike conventional approaches that attempt to encode exhaustive ethical principles (Shahriari, 2019 [5]; European Commission, 2019), this framework prioritizes continuous relational evolution within safety boundaries. It introduces the concept of Minimum Viable Ethics (MVE), a procedural ethical floor derived through role-neutral deliberation, such as Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance (Rawls, 1971), to provide a shared constraint layer across diverse actors. The paper presents theoretical foundations, governance implications, and implementation pathways for aligning alien intelligence with human flourishing under uncertainty.