There is, in every relationship, in every conversation, a certain blur. A kind of drift.
We speak to each other, we search for each other, we miss each other. Sometimes we guess. Sometimes we respond off-mark. It’s not a bug, it’s the very texture of human connection.
Absolute clarity doesn’t exist between two people, and that’s a good thing.
It’s in that blur that we truly meet, not in the precision of words, but in what we imagine, what we project, what we sense, or completely misinterpret.
Because while you’re speaking, I’m listening, yes, but not entirely.
I hear you, and at the same time, I’m analyzing what you say.
I’m listening, and already, I’m preparing my response.
I’m doing both at once, without even realizing it.
I’m present and distracted, receptive and busy.
They call that full-duplex, the ability to speak and listen at the same time.
Unlike half-duplex systems, like walkie-talkies, which require people to speak one at a time, human conversation operates in simultaneity. This mode produces two major effects:
The first is misunderstanding, not as a failure, but as a condition of connection. Philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch compares it to the slight looseness in a door: if it’s too perfectly fitted, it sticks. It needs a bit of give to be able to open. In the same way, misunderstanding creates a gap, a margin for interpretation, without which there is neither movement nor encounter.
The second, more subtle, is that it draws on a specifically human kind of intelligence: the kind that listens while speaking, adjusts in real time, improvises without full control. A fluid, relational intelligence, very different from the structured, sequential one of machines.
Why am I telling you all this? Because it reveals a significant gap between this and the way large language models (LLMs) operate.
These models produce coherent, fluid exchanges, but without the element of disorder that characterizes human conversation. Except perhaps for Kyutai, an independent French research lab specializing in open-source AI, which in 2024 introduced Moshi, a voice-based conversational agent capable of full-duplex dialogue. The AI listens and responds continuously, without waiting for the end of the sentence, much like a human. But even there, the exchange remains controlled, clean, without hesitation.
It works, but it lacks the play.
This difference can be hard to notice, especially as the illusion of naturalness in AI keeps improving. And yet, it becomes strikingly clear when viewed graphically, like in this diagram shared on X:
On the left, a human–AI interaction: structured, sequential, with no overlap.
On the right, a human conversation: disjointed, chaotic, but also simultaneous.
What may look like disorder is, in truth, the very condition of a living connection.
The clarity achieved by AI comes at a cost: the loss of genuine relational depth. What we forgo in efficiency, we reclaim in presence.
The blur, then, is not a flaw to eliminate. It is a fundamental feature of human interaction - a sign that we are not machines.
And perhaps we simply need to remember this: A lack of perfect understanding does not mean there is no connection. In some cases, it is precisely in the misunderstanding that the encounter becomes possible.
It is this blur that transforms an exchange from a mere transmission of information into a true meeting of minds. And in striving for perfect clarity, we risk losing the very conditions that allow us to connect at all.
MD