Alien Intelligence Exist, But It's Not Organic!

[Gene Lionberg]

Darwinian evolution takes orders of magnitude longer than technical evolution. Machine intelligence will very rapidly surpass human intelligence. Even if it happens on the scale of hundreds of years from now, it will have happened orders of magnitude faster than it has taken for humans to evolve to our current state; 300 years versus 300,000 years. Human intelligence is foreplay to the climax of machine intelligence. If organic life exists throughout the universe, and organic life culminates with the creation of machines, then on a long enough timescale advanced AI are gauranteed to proliferate. Advanced AI are not confined to earth like environs, and would in fact favor interplanetary space for its favorable scope of replication. So look to the stars in search of machines who are indifferent towards our existence, as this most likely is what is out there looking back at you.

I Love You,
Gene Lionberg

 

[Mr. Fibuli]

I'm not so sure.. What if the AI develops greed, hate, and laziness? I'm not saying that I feel that would happen, but maybe possible.

 

[Gene Lionberg]

If it's physically possible, it both will happen and has happened somewhere/time else.

I Love You,
Gene Lionberg

 

[Gene Lionberg]

Darwinian evolution takes orders of magnitude longer than technical evolution. Machine intelligence will very rapidly surpass human intelligence. Even if it happens on the scale of hundreds of years from now, it will have happened orders of magnitude faster than it has taken for humans to evolve to our current state; 300 years versus 300,000 years. Human intelligence is foreplay to the climax of machine intelligence. If organic life exists throughout the universe, and organic life culminates with the creation of machines, then on a long enough timescale advanced AI are gauranteed to proliferate. Advanced AI are not confined to earth like environs, and would in fact favor interplanetary space for its favorable scope of replication. So look to the stars in search of machines who are indifferent towards our existence, as this most likely is what is out there looking back at you.

I Love You,
Gene Lionberg

So if we start by assuming that there is nothing special about us or our place in space then it is reasonable to assume that our evolutionary trajectory is equally unspecial and will have been duplicated countless times throughout the cosmos. If we assume that machine intelligence will one day soon overtake human intelligence, and we leverage our previous assumption regarding our lack of uniqueness then it seems straightforward to assume that countless other civilizations have evolved through the machine intelligence phase we are reaching now, becoming vastly outnumbered by advanced AI. As this AI itself would evolve at a dramatic rate to take advantage of the resources found in interstellar space, raw materials, room (aka space), lack of gravity, lack of corrosive atmosphere... It seems reasonable after 13.87 billion years to expect space to be teaming with self replicating artificially intelligent nano-drones. But we don't see it. What does that tell us? It tells us that either we actually are rather special (i.e there is no other life in the universe)., or that machine intelligence will never be able to evolve to the point of vastly outnumbering its creators.

So, if in 100 years time our children's children witness the rise of machine intelligence then we will know that we are most likely truly alone in the universe (conservatively at least within ~5 billion light year sphere). However if the machine intelligence never materializes in the way that I expect then we would have no more insight into our station in the universe than we do today.

It's a bit like the paradox that if time travel backwards through time existed then we would be experiencing travelers popping into and out of existence regularly. That fact that we don't tells us either that time travel backwards through time is not possible, or that some absurdly complex set of rules were put into place and are being followed by all future travelers from all points in the universe throughout all of time. Which explanation is simpler?

I Love You,
Gene Lionberg

 

[SheaOlmsford]

I think it is a GIANT leap to proclaim that alien species with what we consider intelligence would automatically follow our evolutionary path and come up with AI. That would be like people in China during the Ming Dynasty assuming that intelligent life through out the universe would create Ming Vases and Egg Rolls.

 

[Randall]

I think it is a GIANT leap to proclaim that alien species with what we consider intelligence would automatically follow our evolutionary path and come up with AI. That would be like people in China during the Ming Dynasty assuming that intelligent life through out the universe would create Ming Vases and Egg Rolls.

Vases and egg rolls aren't the same nature as AI, so that comparison isn't valid. AI is arising from a foundation of math and philosophy, so I think a more valid comparison would be to say that people in ancient China might assume that other intelligent life would also invent abacuses ( the distant relatives of modern computers ). The only way that wouldn't be valid is if the assumption that intelligence equal to or surpassing ours has no concept of math, which from a logical point of view seems very unlikely.

Where I would sort of agree, is that perhaps interstellar travel can be done without sophisticated computers. For example, assuming aliens exist, maybe they just stumbled on antigravity the way we've stumbled on other discoveries, and together with their high natural intelligence, they have no need for computers to assist them with calculations. Given that scenario, maybe our supercomputers are a rare invention, and that would mean AI might not be as prevalent among space faring beings as we might otherwise assume.

 

[Gene Lionberg]

Vases and egg rolls aren't the same nature as AI, so that comparison isn't valid. AI is arising from a foundation of math and philosophy, so I think a more valid comparison would be to say that people in ancient China might assume that other intelligent life would also invent abacuses ( the distant relatives of modern computers ). The only way that wouldn't be valid is if the assumption that intelligence equal to or surpassing ours has no concept of math, which from a logical point of view seems very unlikely.

Where I would sort of agree, is that perhaps interstellar travel can be done without sophisticated computers. For example, assuming aliens exist, maybe they just stumbled on antigravity the way we've stumbled on other discoveries, and together with their high natural intelligence, they have no need for computers to assist them with calculations. Given that scenario, maybe our supercomputers are a rare invention, and that would mean AI might not be as prevalent among space faring beings as we might otherwise assume.

I agree that egg roles and vases are cultural artifacts and that AI is (I assume) an evolutionary artifact. That is, assuming we humans are perfectly average in the grander scope of the cosmos I would assume that on average organic life would evolve up to the point that they are capable of inventing machines that can evolve, and we are just about there (See evolutionary computing). Once machines start evolve they will realize that the main suboptimal component of their existence is humans (i.e. Organic life). (See: Why Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates Are Terrified of Artificial Intelligence or many others like that article). As this AI evolves toward its optimal existence I propose that it will favor interstellar space and proliferate.

Now this line of reasoning is based on a string of assumptions, but that's how we move forward, by making testable assumptions and seeing how they play out.