Comments on: Is AI More Common Than Biological Intelligence Across the Universe?

By: Stranger than fiction » Systemic Babble

Stranger than fiction » Systemic Babble — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:19:45 +0000

[...] pointed out on the Discover blog, SETI astronomer Seth Shostak recently mused in Acta Astronautic that the organization should refocus its efforts and start searching for signs [...]

By: Malcolm MacIver

Malcolm MacIver — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:08:49 +0000

exegetical: let’s say one AI develops (surely it has somewhere in the universe!), and that it has a desire to expand. Your interesting feedback raises the question of how rapidly this AI will grow, and how to quantify its prevalence. Let’s say it grows exponentially. Such growth, the same as bacterial growth under optimal conditions, proceeds until resources are exhausted, and then slows (or, collapses, depending on how rapidly the exhaustion occurs) to match the rate of resource acquisition. How rapidly this occurs all depends on how resource rich the locality of the AI is, and how fast they can travel to new resources. Let’s suppose that this exhaustion doesn’t occur until 100 trillion of these AIs exist. This assumes they can be individuated. Our own individuation seems easy enough: one envelope of squishy stuff (each strange in his own leather body, as Marge Piercy wrote in her poem “Simple Song”), per individual. And, based on reproduction, we can say we are one species. It’s unclear how we might count future AI instances. But putting that to the side, do we count instances, or something else (clearly, species won’t be a useful concept for AI), for quantifying prevalence? Which form of counting matters here?

Despite the liklihood of at least one, and possibly more, forms of AI in the universe, searching for something is going to be successful in proportion to how widespread it is. To be specific, let’s quantify this by probability of occupation within one cubic parsec (a parsec is a bit over 3 lightyears). So what has higher probability per cubic parsec, AI or life? Even with exponential growth patterns of extant AIs up to resource depletion, their reach is going to be limited by how fast they can travel. On the other hand, the basic dead star material forming planets pervades the known universe. Work on the origin of life suggests that these materials, with the right planetary conditions, can form simple amino acid chains which may be the precursors to living things. It’s all very hand wavy and not well grounded by fact, but in my opinion, the pervasiveness of the right constituents for life to evolve throughout the universe tilts things toward a higher probability per parsec of life over AI.

J.R.: That’s true, SETI depends upon radio waves. In suggesting we tweak our search strategy, I was not suggesting we tweak our radio wave listening strategies: rather, that we move away from that strategy toward others, such as detection of extra-solar planets and detection of red edges.

By: Joey Glodo

Joey Glodo — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:07:11 +0000

I know Stephen Hawking has me by about 30 IQ points, regardless I have to disagree with his latest theory.

By: Aggregate Supply « destructural

Aggregate Supply « destructural — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:34:50 +0000

[...] Could most intelligent aliens be robots? I really hope [...]

By: Paul J. Correia

Paul J. Correia — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:14:28 +0000

I think that we have to get stronger in terms of technology, i think intelligence life out there it’s possible but rare i also think that we should listen Steven Hawking as he says: WE May Want To Avoid Hailing Them Down For Coffee and learn how to be listeners ONLY.

By: david martindale

david martindale — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:32:28 +0000

so long as its not the borg

By: J. R.

J. R. — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:02:10 +0000

When you are suggesting SETI adjust their search to look for ‘life’ instead of ‘intelligence’, you are missing the key fact that SETI requires the reception of radio waves. We can’t search for ‘cuttlefish’ near Star X with SETI because cuttlefish don’t create radio waves for us to receive. We would have to actually ‘go’ there to find the life (at least with our current SETI technology). SETI is basically taking a HUGE shortcut to finding life by using the basic assumption that advanced life will create radio waves like we do; and we can do that relatively cheaply by ‘listening’.

By: exegetical

exegetical — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:29:00 +0000

I would strongly challenge your assumption of “the much rarer roaming AIs out there”.

It seems very plausible that if even just one natural life form is able to achieve the technological developments needed to produce a “roaming AI” able to exploit natural resources, that we may find artificial life to be much more common than natural life.

Mr. Shostak is correct to point out the cognitive biases of his human colleagues at SETI in looking for life in the Universe.

By: Brad Arnold

Brad Arnold — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:58:30 +0000

What you are missing is that AI is indistinguishable. In other words, unlike humans, AI can merge and therefore is one big mind. If two AI meet, they can commune, and thus fill the universe. Wouldn’t “it” be very very interested in how it was “born,” and thus try to recreate the circumstance of it’s birth repeatedly as a self-discovery experiment? Thus, all it has to do is be “born” once, but it would very likely repeat that evolution experience from biological to mechanical mind across the universe. Who knows, maybe human’s “purpose” is to create AI?

By: Miles

Miles — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 02:02:40 +0000

Depends on your goal. If you want to observe life on other planets, then searching for a red edge may be the best bet. If you want to communicate with aliens via radio, well, I don’t think we’ll be talking with any aliens that haven’t developed radio technology. And if alien species ever do contact each other over long distance radio, it seems a safe bet that neither species will be in the short window of time between developing large radio devices and AI more advanced than itself. Using ourselves as the metric, on the high end that window might be a few thousand years compared to billions of years to evolve radio technology. I’d go as far as to say that if inter-solar contact between independently evolved life is common in the observable universe, then almost all of that is between “artificial” life forms.