+- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com)
+-- Forum: Culture (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-49.html)
+--- Forum: Weird & Beyond (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-123.html)
+--- Thread: If we encounter aliens, they'll resemble AI & not little green men (Seth Shostak) (/thread-10484.html)
If we encounter aliens, they'll resemble AI & not little green men (Seth Shostak) - C C - Jun 15, 2021
EXCERPTS: . . . Any aliens that trek to our planet are unlikely to be carbon-based life forms, either hirsute or hairless. Their cognitive abilities will probably not be powered by a spongy mass of cells we’d call a brain. They will probably have gone beyond biological smarts and, indeed, beyond biology itself. They won’t be alive.
The reason is a simple consequence of the staggering distances to the stars. Even the nearest, Proxima Centauri, is 25tn miles from Earth. Our fastest rockets would take 75,000 years to reach it. Neither humans nor Klingons are built to withstand such trips.
You might be thinking that the aliens might have far speedier spacecraft. Without doubt, that’s possible. But there are natural limitations to high-speed rockets. Suppose that an alien would like to cover the distance between Proxima Centauri and Earth in 10 years. Their rocket would need to muster 600m times as much energy as a Saturn V rocket. Double that number if they plan to come to a stop at Earth and engage with the locals.
[...] Traveling from one solar system to another is incredibly difficult and expensive. However, if you’re not in a hurry, the prospects for an interstellar voyage brighten considerably. Such leisurely trips aren’t going to appeal to biological passengers who will die long before their destination is reached. Machines, on the other hand, won’t complain if they’re cooped up in a spaceship for tens of thousands of years. They don’t require food, oxygen, sanitation or entertainment. And they don’t insist on a round-trip ticket.
Artificial intelligence aliens may not be as appealing as those who are warm-blooded and squishy, but we shouldn’t get hung up on an anthropocentric viewpoint. Researchers who work in AI estimate that machines able to beat humans on an IQ test will emerge from the labs by mid-century. If we can do it, some extraterrestrials will have already done it.
Therefore it’s reasonable to expect that any cosmic intelligence paying us a visit will be synthetic. That rules out easy speculation on what the “aliens” will look like. But if it’s a machine, who cares? Of greater concern would be its intentions... (MORE - details)
RE: If we encounter aliens, they'll resemble AI & not little green men (Seth Shostak) - Magical Realist - Jun 15, 2021
Quote:Therefore it’s reasonable to expect that any cosmic intelligence paying us a visit will be synthetic. That rules out easy speculation on what the “aliens” will look like.
A superartilect far in advance of our technology wont look like anything we are used to. It will have the ability of locally manipulating space, time, and gravity as well as morphing into any shape it finds convenient. There might even be involved a new type of massless matter that bears resemblance to a plasma state. More of a field of incandescent energy than a physical machine. Perhaps indistinguishable from a god. (refer to applicable Star trek episodes)
RE: If we encounter aliens, they'll resemble AI & not little green men (Seth Shostak) - stryder - Jun 16, 2021
(Jun 15, 2021 08:27 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
Quote:Therefore it’s reasonable to expect that any cosmic intelligence paying us a visit will be synthetic. That rules out easy speculation on what the “aliens” will look like.
A superartilect far in advance of our technology wont look like anything we are used to. It will have the ability of locally manipulating space, time, and gravity as well as morphing into any shape it finds convenient. There might even be involved a new type of massless matter that bears resemblance to a plasma state. More of a field of incandescent energy than a physical machine. Perhaps indistinguishable from a god. (refer to applicable Star trek episodes)
Who's to say an AI during a sinularity event wouldn't choose to "Evolve" into one that could grow and have offspring so that it doesn't need a master fabricator race or factory, it might not even stay formed to a silicon basis and move to something more "fleshy". If it had already happened we might even be descended from such an oddity. (I'm not sure if P. K. Dick considered that we all might of stemmed from Replicants)
RE: If we encounter aliens, they'll resemble AI & not little green men (Seth Shostak) - Magical Realist - Jun 16, 2021
(Jun 16, 2021 12:57 AM)stryder Wrote:
(Jun 15, 2021 08:27 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
Quote:Therefore it’s reasonable to expect that any cosmic intelligence paying us a visit will be synthetic. That rules out easy speculation on what the “aliens” will look like.
A superartilect far in advance of our technology wont look like anything we are used to. It will have the ability of locally manipulating space, time, and gravity as well as morphing into any shape it finds convenient. There might even be involved a new type of massless matter that bears resemblance to a plasma state. More of a field of incandescent energy than a physical machine. Perhaps indistinguishable from a god. (refer to applicable Star trek episodes)
Who's to say an AI during a sinularity event wouldn't choose to "Evolve" into one that could grow and have offspring so that it doesn't need a master fabricator race or factory, it might not even stay formed to a silicon basis and move to something more "fleshy". If it had already happened we might even be descended from such an oddity. (I'm not sure if P. K. Dick considered that we all might of stemmed from Replicants)
The artilects might come to view their own carbon based progenitors as but crude extentions of their own evolution, much as we view protozoans as but primitive stages towards our own multicellular godliness.
![[Image: il_1140xN.1945848928_drck.jpg]](https://i.etsystatic.com/12080329/r/il/86db9e/1945848928/il_1140xN.1945848928_drck.jpg)