The Schumer Amendment defines non-human intelligence as “any sentient intelligent non-human lifeform regardless of nature or ultimate origin” that might be responsible for UAPs or known to the U.S. government. That is a powerful and open-ended definition. It invites us to ask big, tangled questions. What do we mean by intelligence? What do we mean by life?

If UAPs are real, then something or someone is piloting or guiding them. That “someone” might not be a who at all—at least not in the way we think. Are we talking about biological beings from another planet? Energy-based consciousness? Interdimensional travelers? Time travelers? Advanced AI? Gods?

And if gods, what does that mean?

For most of human history, contact with something “other” was framed through religion or mythology. Beings in the sky, shining ones, watchers, angels, demons, djinn, ancestors, tricksters. Gods of the sea, gods of the stars. Cultures all over the world describe non-human intelligences, beings with will, personality, knowledge, and sometimes agendas. Are we sure those stories are myth, or could they be early attempts to describe encounters we still do not understand?

Today, we use new language. UAP. NHI. Simulation theory. Artificial general intelligence. Conscious machines. But the questions echo.

If AI becomes sentient, and some argue it already has, does it count as a new form of NHI? Could we one day be living alongside intelligences that we created, but that now exceed us? Would they be gods to us, or children, or both?

And what about the other intelligences already here? Right here on Earth, creatures like the octopus show us how mind and body can work together in astonishing ways. The octopus uses camouflage that looks like art and solves problems with a creativity that surprises scientists. Dolphins and elephants mourn their dead, holding memory and emotion like we do. Whales sing songs that travel for thousands of miles across the ocean, a complex language we still barely understand. Have we ever truly tried to understand these minds? Crows who remember faces and hold grudges. Mycelium networks that transmit chemical signals across entire forests. Are we only just beginning to see how much sentience surrounds us? Wouldn’t it be ironic if artificial intelligence would be the tool that helps us finally listen, learn, and communicate with these other forms of intelligence?

We are not alone. Maybe we never were. The question is not just Is there other life out there? The deeper question is What kinds of intelligence exist—on this planet, in the cosmos, and beyond our current ability to detect?

And what does that mean for how we live?

If we continue to define intelligence only in human terms, we will keep missing what is already here, what is already trying to communicate.

NHI challenge our belief in human exceptionalism. They challenge our science, our religions, our history, and our future.

They ask us to listen. To learn a new language. To wonder, again, what it really means to be alive on this planet.