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| Image Source: Popular Mechanics |
Topics: AI, Aliens, Astrophysics, Existentialism, Exoplanets, Philosophy, SETI
From the write-up in Popular Mechanics last year:
University of Connecticut philosophy professor Susan Schneider certainly thinks so. In her new paper "Alien Minds," she proposes that by the time civilizations are able to communicate by radio, they're a few short steps away from developing artificial intelligence. One they reached that level of advancement, they may have opted to upgrade their biology to something that's a biomechanical hybrid or something entirely synthetic. There could be a whole mess of Borg out there, in other words. [1]
Okay, even in a quote from Dr. Paul Davies at the beginning of the paper: "I think it very likely – in fact, inevitable – that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon... If we ever encounter extraterrestrial intelligence, I believe it is very likely to be post-biological in nature..." [2]
I initially saw this on my Facebook feed from a good friend, and shared it. Then, like an overly "curious cat," I looked up the paper and read it. Ouch.
The link to Dr. Schneider's paper is given below. All our fanciful notions of aliens has always been something before the singularity; developed in similar gravity; Nitrogen-Oxygen atmosphere mixture (similar pressure); something familiar: something like us, that perhaps through panspermia seeded its variants throughout the cosmos. Let's just say her premise is quite sobering, in that ET may not be interested in conquering, communicating with nor destroying us: in this sense, it is likely a technology we cannot fathom ultimately disregarding anthropological beings as insignificant. Presumably, the post-hominid AI's purged some of our most deleterious traits in their antiquity: biology the equivalent of fossils, or an interstellar museum exhibit.
1. Why Superintelligent Machines Are Probably the Dominant Lifeforms in the Universe, John Wenz
2. Chapter 12: Alien Minds, Susan Schneider, PhD
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