A book by Martin Blais
When a machine finds the words, where is the presence?
As an actor, I’m drawn to what happens between the words. A silence. A hesitation. A look that changes the meaning of a sentence.
Today, a machine can write that sentence. It can even produce a voice that moves us. So where does presence lie?
That question runs through The Breath of the Machine: To Do or To Be – What the Machine Can’t Grasp. It brings us back to creativity, consciousness and the deeply personal experience of simply being alive.
mbim.ca · 2025
An experience in a forest in Québec’s Eastern Townships changed the way I approached that question. For a moment, roles, performance and the person I thought of as “me” no longer filled the whole space. What remained was a breath. A presence.
Back in the world of artificial intelligence, that contrast took on a new significance. We can admire what AI produces while also asking what its output reveals about us. About our need for meaning. About the value we place on what we feel and share.
I wrote this book at the meeting point between a fascination with technology and the experience of being alive. I explore what we entrust to a machine, what we expect from it and what we choose to nurture in ourselves.
The passage chosen by Joël Legendre
“So, what remains human? Perhaps not one single thing, but a constellation of beautiful fragilities: the hesitant step searching for the right footing, the laugh that slips off-key, the ability to grieve for a world the machine can only calculate, and that memory of the heart that remembers how to love before it even understands. It is this breath, conscious and embodied, that the machine will never be able to imitate.”
Martin Blais, Chapter 8, “What Remains Human.” A passage from the book quoted by Joël Legendre in the foreword.
“Reading it gave me chills, and no machine will ever be able to do that.”
My friend Joël Legendre, “The Shiver the Machine Cannot Know,” foreword.
Book excerpts and foreword quotations on this page are translated from the French original.
Time to live
Creativity is central to this reflection. What happens when a text moves us, even though no lived experience lies behind its words? The emotion is ours. It deserves our attention, as do the meaning we find in the work and the encounter it makes possible.
I’m also interested in what AI can open up in creative work. In the chapter on language, I write: “It is precisely its lack of ego, judgment and sensitivity that can, paradoxically, make it an ideal creative partner.” A suggestion to discuss, an idea to turn over, a draft to revisit: the tool can feed an exploration whose direction we still choose.
The same question extends into our relationships and decisions. A reassuring response can help us. It can also prompt us to consider what we are seeking in a conversation: information, a listening ear, a connection? The book explores these areas of closeness and confusion, and the responsibility we carry when we rely on a calculation to make a decision.
An illustration from Chapter 7.
Then there is time. If artificial intelligence allowed us to finish in ten hours what once took forty, what would we do with the thirty hours we regained? That possibility presents us with a choice. We can keep chasing productivity. We can also give more attention to the people we love, to creating something, to a conversation that takes its time.
That choice reaches into the way we organize work, educate and recognize the value of a life. I return to it in the final chapter:
“This chapter offers no ready-made solution, nor a political platform. It is an invitation to breathe. An invitation to see education no longer as preparation for performance, but as an introduction to presence.”
From Chapter 9, “Educating the Breath.” Translated from French.
The Breath of the Machine leaves room for doubt, poetry and personal experience. I hope readers will find something here to carry into their own reflections, even in the most ordinary gestures: listening to someone, creating something, choosing where to place our attention.
Voices around the book
“The text is dense and rich, yet never impenetrable.”
Les Chats Livres, review posted by Angelique-311 on Booknode
January 4, 2026. Translated from French. The reviewer received a review copy.
“a mirror that reveals something about our own inner life”
Mademoiselle_Philo, reader review on Livraddict
December 10, 2025. Translated from French.
More voices from the foreword
Personal reflections from Bhaskar Goswami, Connie Rotella, Georges Gay and Richard Jutras join Joël Legendre’s contribution in the foreword. The quotations below are translated from French.
“This is more than a book. It is something passed on. A breath. A gift.”
Bhaskar Goswami, “An Oasis of Authenticity.”
“This book is a breath that makes you want to slow down for a moment, to ask what you want to protect in this fast-changing world, and to keep open that space where you can still be yourself.”
Connie Rotella, “Keeping the Space Open.”
“I hope this book inspires you as much as it inspires me, encouraging you to rediscover your own humanity in the age of AI and to face your challenges with a fresh perspective.”
Georges Gay, “Running from One Challenge to the Next.”
“His journey, like his book, reflects that flame: an honest, demanding search that is unafraid to step outside established boundaries to find its own truth.”
Richard Jutras, “The Art of Inhabiting a Role.”
Listen to the conversation: Les Chats Livres discusses the book in a French-language podcast episode.
Find your edition
Published by mbim.ca in 2025, The Breath of the Machine is available in English in the following print editions.
Visit the English edition’s website
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Prefer to read or listen in French?
Le souffle de la machine
Quand l’intelligence artificielle inspire
All formats below are in French.
Narrated by the author