AI Could Explain Why We're Not Meeting Any Aliens, Wild Study Proposes (sciencealert.com)
- Reference: 0173517080
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/04/14/0446244/ai-could-explain-why-were-not-meeting-any-aliens-wild-study-proposes
- Source link: https://www.sciencealert.com/ai-could-explain-why-were-not-meeting-any-aliens-wild-study-proposes
> The [2]Fermi Paradox is the discrepancy between the apparent high likelihood of advanced civilizations existing and the total lack of evidence that they do exist. Many solutions have been proposed for why the discrepancy exists. One of the ideas is the ' [3]Great Filter .' The Great Filter is a hypothesized event or situation that prevents intelligent life from becoming interplanetary and interstellar and even leads to its demise....
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> [H]ow about the rapid development of AI?
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> A new paper in Acta Astronautica explores the idea that Artificial Intelligence becomes Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) and that ASI is the Great Filter. The paper's title is " [4]Is Artificial Intelligence the Great Filter that makes advanced technical civilizations rare in the universe ?"
"Upon reaching a [5]technological singularity , ASI systems will quickly surpass biological intelligence and evolve at a pace that completely outstrips traditional oversight mechanisms, leading to unforeseen and unintended consequences that are unlikely to be aligned with biological interests or ethics," the paper explains... The author says their projects "underscore the critical need to quickly establish regulatory frameworks for AI development on Earth and the advancement of a multiplanetary society to mitigate against such existential threats."
"The persistence of intelligent and conscious life in the universe could hinge on the timely and effective implementation of such international regulatory measures and
[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/ai-could-explain-why-were-not-meeting-any-aliens-wild-study-proposes
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576524001772?dgcid=rss_sd_all
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
These people are hallucinating (Score:3)
At this time, there is no AI that deserves the name and there is no reliable indication that it is possible to build one. No, the physicalist argument "humans do it and humans are pure machines" is religion, not Science. Until we find out how humans do it (well, the ones actually using what General Intelligence they have), we do not know how it is done. So far, Neurosciences have come up empty. Second, even if possible, there is absolutely no indication intelligent machines would surpass human intelligence. There are estimates to the contrary that say the human brain is within one order of magnitude the most powerful computing mechanism possible in this physical universe. Hence these people are making up some fantasies, nothing more. That is just dumb.
Shivans (Score:2)
Or there's something out there which makes sure that no society ever gets beyond maybe a few star systems. Think like the Reapers in Mass Effect or the Shivans in Freespace. In other words, any time a society becomes sufficiently advanced, they are deemed a threat and wiped out. Or maybe there really is some kind of Star Trek Prime Directive kind of thing going on. Since our knowledge of physics is limited by the light speed barrier, it seems unlikely that any civilization capable of FTL travel would be us
There is no such thing as a tech singulariry (Score:2)
The technological singularity is a mental construct, based on flawed assumptions. The first such assumption is that intelligence is a thing. It's in reality many different things. The second is that if you are intelligent, you can design something more intelligent than you... Well, you are intelligent, can you?
We already have machines more "intelligent" than us. In some aspects. What's really the meaning of a human-level intelligence? Something that understands the Universe as we do (as we do being the elep
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A small correction: we don't want magic, the startups selling autonomous driving want money, and selling magic to the moneybags is the way that they have found to do it. After that it's a free for all on the share market.
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The "technological singularity" is metaphor based on the [1]mathematical singularity [wikipedia.org]
> a singularity is a point at which a given mathematical object is not defined, or a point where the mathematical object ceases to be well-behaved in some particular way
In physics, when the mathematics describing a system has a singularity it means that the mathematical description is inadequate to describe the real word. It does not mean that some wild magic thing occurs the breaks reality, it means that our understanding is i
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_(mathematics)
So, why are we not meeting alien AIs then? (Score:2)
It's very carbonist of the article to assume that aliens need to be squishy biological ones.
Unless there's a way around light speed, the *only* aliens we're ever likely to encounter are electronic ones, since those are the only ones likely to survive a thousand or million year journey...
Pfft... [1]Thinking meat! [mit.edu]...
[1] https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html
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Agreed.
No idea what an "energy" based being would act like. How does pure "energy" interact with anything else (including other "energy") w/o a physical medium?
Waves might interact, but they don't change direction w/o very strong curving fields, which you can't just create with other EM waves. Something has to curve space time. The only thing we know that does that is... mass.
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Highly unlikely. Nothing we humans have ever built has lasted more than about 5000 years. And those things are not fancy electronic googaws (finally got to use that word!), they are crumbly stone blocks put together in simple patterns. Why should aliens have it easy?
Everything in the universe fights entropy. Those hypothetical alien robots sent out to greet us will break apart over a million year journey. The circuits will be subtly degraded by cosmic rays and the spaceship will miss the target, fly off
...and? (Score:2)
Don't leave as hanging
The Dark Forest hypothesis is more likely (Score:2)
It's literally on Netflix right now as a big production show.
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I agree this is definitely a possibility.
I'm not sure I agree (Score:2)
The world of Dune had highly advanced (albiet, somewhat feudal) interstellar civilizations, yet no computers at all. All those formative years that we humans spend being brain-damaged by the BASIC programming language and macroeconomics were instead devoted to developing and disciplining the mind, spirit, and physiological processes of the body (think Bene Gesserit, and also the mentat-trained). One might point to The Bulterian Jihad as the reason why, but the book was so poorly written (by Herbert's son,
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IMO you underestimate exactly how fundamental universal turning machines are to the math and underlying structure of this universe.
That said, as I posted above, all of this is nonsense. IMO the great filter is much simpler: the availability of cheap energy dense fuel to bootstrap an industrial economy capable of developing the technology to escape our gravity well.
The energy requirements are enormous.
AI Could Explain Why We're Not Meeting Any Aliens? (Score:2)
nah it;s because the Aliens believe americans talk out of their arses,
I've always felt the great filter (Score:3)
The filter is likely access to a ton of cheap stored energy.. enough to bootstrap an industrial level of technology from nothing to oil->fusion.
Solar/wind/thermo likely isn't enough to bootstrap.
Large sources of live carbon chain producers (e.g. trees, in our case) isn't enough.
In our case, coal got us to oil. Run out of coal and oil, and that's it, you're stuck if you haven't figured out fusion.
If you're lucky, something like coal and oil got you to solar/wind/thermo and some sort of energy storage tech.
Without any of that, you're never going to the stars.
Even with that, you're still not going to the stars, i think.
Everyone loves to whinge about societal collapse, wars, pollution, global warming, AI blah blah but eh, imo that's all nonsense compared to the energy problem.
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That is just nonsense. Pretty much all tech we have today is entirely possible without burning fossile fuels. May take a few decades to get there, enad certainly requires managing and stopping population growth, but that is it.
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There is no way we could have made it to the industrial age without coal. There is literally no other source of fuel as energy dense or cheap.
You can't make solar panels w/o an industrialized economy.
Maybe we can maintain our technology w/o fossil fuels. But we would have never developed them w/o burning carbon chains. Suggest another energy source with the same density and availability
You're not going to make steel with wind power or dams big enough to require... steel.
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If your planet does have enough stored energy to develop technology, no civilization is going to develop the technology to reach the stars (or even local orbit).
Certainly escaping our gravity wells requires burning carbon chains of some sort - Hydrolox is just too hard to use as a fuel during the early stages of rocket development. It is quite possibly the LEAST likely fuel you can start with to get a rocket program working.
Even liquid oxidants for use with hydrocarbon based fuels are hard w/o refrigeration
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Some light reading about the development of technology and the energy requirements.
[1]https://www.amazon.com/Energy-... [amazon.com]
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Civilization-History-MIT-Press/dp/0262035774
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You kind of nailed it.
Our oil and coal is the result of processes that started and finished hundreds of million years ago.
Imagine a stone age civilization that never has oil or coal.
Sure they evolve into bronce age and roman like iron age.
Build wind mills like the dutch in the middle ages and water mills like the romans already did.
What I do not agree with, is that solar/wind/water/ storage is not enough.
Beyond technology as earth bound technology, the question is why would anyone go to the stars? Generatio
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> solar/wind/water/ storage is not enough.
See my other post. You're not going to boostrap a rocketry program based on non-hydrocarbon fuels.
Please suggest a energy dense replacement. Don't say hydrolox. That isn't going to work as a starting point for a ton of different reasons.
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You don't need to send a live being to make contact btw. The Fermi Paradox includes all other kinds of contact.
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Basically, you get around all of that by not sending delicate bags of mostly water. You send something a lot more durable and long lived.