Back in 1950, Enrico Fermi posed the question now known as Fermi .’s paradox: With so many galaxies, stars, and planets out there, there’s a good chance life exists elsewhere — so why haven’t we found it yet? The size of the universe is only one possible answer. It is possible that humans have encountered extraterrestrial life (ET) but did not realize it. Maybe it don’t want to be found. Maybe it’s tracking the Earth without our knowledge. Maybe it doesn’t find us interesting.
And there’s another reason: The search for advanced aliens is constrained by human assumptions, including the idea that advanced ET will “live”.
Scientists involved in the search for extraterrestrial life will be looking for what life on Earth needs — carbon and water — as well as biological: gases and organic matter, such as methane, that living organisms exhale, excrete or excrete. Finding biological features is difficult for a variety of reasons, and biosignatures do not necessarily indicate the presence of life, as they may come from other geological or natural forces (eg. example: Methane discovered on Mars has teased scientists for years, but they still haven’t reached a consensus).
The assumption that biological life on other planets will look or function like biological life on Earth is flawed and limited by anthropology. The same is true assuming that advanced intelligent life on other planets would be biological just because humans are. Maybe we haven’t found aliens yet because advanced alien spaces have surpassed biology.
In the great plan, Earth is a relatively young planet. If we assume that some biological life appeared on other planets, then we can also make some educated assumptions about how that life evolved — other species in particular. also invented technology, such as tools, vehicles, factories, and computers. Maybe those species invented artificial intelligence (AI) or virtual worlds. Advanced ET may have reached “technological singularity, “The point at which AI exceeds human or biological intelligence. Maybe they experienced what many scientists believe was available to Homo sapiens — fusion of biological organisms and machines. Perhaps they have become nano. Probably they are data or be part of a digital network that functions like a collective consciousness. In fact, the final variable of Drake’s Equation—A framework for estimating the likelihood of intelligent, advanced species existing in the universe — posits that technologically advanced civilizations emit detectable signals over a period of time finite periods of time, suggesting that they will eventually become extinct or become postbiotic.
Opinion that ET intelligence can exist as “super” AI has been proposed by scientists such as Susan Schneider, founding director of Center for Future Minds; SETI Senior Astronomer Seth Shostak; and others. In one op-ed for Guardians, Shostak suggested that extraterrestrials smart enough to search for Earth “could be beyond biological intelligence and indeed beyond biology itself”. Caleb Scharf, Director, Director of Columbia Astronomy Program, argue that “Just as someone living on the steppes of 12th-century Mongolia would find a self-driving car both magical and meaningless, we may not be able to register or explain the presence of barbarians. billions of years old machine”.
The potential of AI to be super AI and completely eclipsed the limits of human intelligence long ago interested scientists like Nick Bostrom and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, and thus the possible existence of super AI aliens raises important considerations about the risk of finding – and finding – them. It also raises questions about potential dangers when they find us. Dark forest theory teases these threats, showing that the universe is like a dark forest full of predators and prey and that stealth is the best and perhaps only survival strategy.
