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+--- Thread: Article Alien "life" more advanced than us would be artificial and bizarre in its motivations (/thread-14875.html)
Alien "life" more advanced than us would be artificial and bizarre in its motivations - C C - Oct 28, 2023
Humans manipulating controls on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise was always a glaring anachronism, since by then one merely need give orders to the pervasive AI system to do anything -- whether vocally or by brain implant. But it goes well beyond that. A biological crew and its burdensome needs would be completely superfluous by then. Thus, we venture into...
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If alien life is artificially intelligent, it may be stranger than we can imagine
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231025-if-alien-life-is-artificially-intelligent-it-may-be-stranger-than-we-can-imagine
EXCERPTS (Martin Rees): It may be only one or two more centuries before humans are overtaken or transcended by inorganic intelligence. [...] That raises a profound question about the wider cosmos: are aliens more likely to be flesh and blood like us, or something more artificial? And if they are more like machines, what would they be like and how might we detect them?
[...] The prospect of inorganic alien intelligence raises some striking possibilities. If these beings are out there, they would act and think totally differently to us. They may not want to be detected. Indeed, their intentions may be impossible to fathom...
[...] non-organic intelligence may have no use for an atmosphere, or the planet on which they originated. Interstellar voyages – or even intergalactic voyages – would hold no terrors for near-immortals.
Indeed, they may prefer to live in zero-gravity [...] It's also not obvious that they would need to live in orbit around a star. Perhaps they'd have new ways of getting energy that we just can't envisage yet.
[...] They may not have the same base desires as us. We have evolved through Darwinian pressures to be an expansionist species. ... They may just want to think deep thoughts.
The fact we haven't seen any, and haven't been invaded by them, doesn't mean there's nothing out there. They may simply be more contemplative. We can't assess whether the "great silence" of the cosmos signifies their absence, or simply their preference.
[...] We also can't assume that they'd even be a "civilisation" ... ET might be a single integrated intelligence.
Pessimistically, they could be what philosophers call "zombies". [...] Might it be that electronic intelligences, even if their intellects seem superhuman, lack self-awareness or inner life?
[..] Alternatively, their more advanced intelligence could well allow them to understand crucial aspects of reality that we cannot, just as a monkey can't understand quantum theory...
[...] it would be what I call "secular intelligent design" that's a bit like machines designing better machines. And while it may not be broadcasting its existence to us, it could be found throughout the Universe... (MORE - missing details)
RE: Alien "life" more advanced than us would be artificial and bizarre in its motivations - Zinjanthropos - Oct 28, 2023
Might as well toss in the Simulation Hypothesis, think of it as some future super AI trying to figure out what the hell happened.
Wondering if future AI could reverse engineer itself? How many prior sets of AI would it have to go back thru? Yet if super AI is part organic then maybe it has to go back to the beginning of time/universe. Could be we are one of several planets to design an AI, super AI just hoping to locate the One.
For life from microbe to multi-cellular then who knows? Universe might be crammed with life but can never reach the communication stage. Life on other worlds could be plant-like, in hibernation half the time, completely submerged in liquid, without enough time to evolve to higher intelligence, whatever.