My father is also a family physician. He once told me, “Don’t fill dead space with dead words.” He wasn’t dismissing small talk so much as calling me to be slow to speak, teaching me that not only are the right words often brief, they seem to come more easily after a period of silence. He had learned from his relationships with his own patients that dead space is not dead at all, but a kind of soil from which the right words might sprout. In the healing encounter, the right words arise out of the silence shared by two fellow creatures wayfaring together, with a kind of precision that finds purity precisely in the waiting, watching, and deep listening.

Generative AI can spit out a diagnosis and treatment plan, but will it know the value of silence?