I thought it was going to be a much more deep article on how we are going to 'create life' and how we might discover it is amazing and will blow our minds.
(Rather than AI just being our servant)
What if the aliens we are seeking are AI?
41–50 of 70 posts
Re: What if the aliens we are seeking are AI?
#42I think it's likely intelligent life outside our planet just doesn't, or won't, have any interest in us outside the infinitesimal possibility of a threat. Consider everything less intelligent than us on our planet... If anything tried to communicate with us, would we even bother trying to figure out what it was trying to say? Would we try to communicate back? Suppose an octopus stacked rocks in piles of prime numbers…
> Suppose an octopus stacked rocks in piles of prime numbers (not including unity). Would we care beyond possibly putting it on display in an aquarium? Considering that a lot of research is done on animal communication, I think that's a poor example.
It would just be considered a mating ritual, with some reference to the fact that numerical artifacts in uncommunicative life aren't uncommon (sunflower spirals and Fibonacci).
Then we'd start studying its anatomy for its prime calculator.
Re: What if the aliens we are seeking are AI?
#43Of course they are. If they exist. There is always the possibility we are the first intelligent life in this galaxy. Someone has to be first.
Re: What if the aliens we are seeking are AI?
#44If these alien beings are built using javascript (as pictured above in the matrix-esque image) then we definitely have nothing to fear. This phrase should defeat them: "Hi, welcome to undefined"
If they used JavaScript, the language's excellent floating point arithmetic would likely make them crash all the time and we will be safe.
Re: What if the aliens we are seeking are AI?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe the problems of today will be solved with the technology of tomorrow. As far as nuclear bombs, we don't really seem to be using them much anymore. They are just trump cards in the mutual assured destruction game.
> As far as nuclear bombs, we don't really seem to be using them much anymore. On the contrary, I think 'we' (the US) use them every day as leverage and a deterrent. We just don't need to detonate them anymore. I think there is more to it than them being just a trump card. You only get to use a trump card once.
Our conventional weapons and economic influence are the leverage and deterrents. It's pretty unlikely that we would ever again nuke a non-nuclear entity. The non nuclear entities know this, so nukes don't really provide any leverage over them. It's our drones, ships, etc. that do, at least on the military side.
For the few entities with nuclear weapons, it's MAD. We would only play the card once, since it would be the final round of the game with that entity.
Re: What if the aliens we are seeking are AI?
#46I think it's likely intelligent life outside our planet just doesn't, or won't, have any interest in us outside the infinitesimal possibility of a threat. Consider everything less intelligent than us on our planet... If anything tried to communicate with us, would we even bother trying to figure out what it was trying to say? Would we try to communicate back? Suppose an octopus stacked rocks in piles of prime numbers…
> Suppose an octopus stacked rocks in piles of prime numbers (not including unity). Would we care beyond possibly putting it on display in an aquarium? Considering that a lot of research is done on animal communication, I think that's a poor example.
This is a really good point. There has been a lot of research into this area lately, as well as animal intelligence in general.
My point is still that life less intelligent than us has nothing to communicate to us that we would care to respond to.
Re: What if the aliens we are seeking are AI?
#47After aliens or AI see how we treat each other they will probably just sterilize the entire planet with a gamma ray to not expose themselves to such apeness.
Re: What if the aliens we are seeking are AI?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Suppose an octopus stacked rocks in piles of prime numbers (not including unity). Would we care beyond possibly putting it on display in an aquarium? Considering that a lot of research is done on animal communication, I think that's a poor example.
It would just be considered a mating ritual, with some reference to the fact that numerical artifacts in uncommunicative life aren't uncommon (sunflower spirals and Fibonacci). Then we'd start studying its anatomy for its prime calculator.
> Then we'd start studying its anatomy for its prime calculator.
Well, that explains all the stories about people being anally probed during alien abductions.
Re: What if the aliens we are seeking are AI?
#49Here is the 'plan' as outlined to me by an old dust hippie outside of Gerlach (Warning: totally crap, light speed remains the limiter, but entertaining still the same): >Humans figure out this brain and AI thing sometime in the next 200 years. So, now 'you' don't need a body or any of that jazz anymore. Brain uploads, that whole shebang, fun times ensue, maybe >Great, now we start ctrl+C and ctrl+V'ing ourselves a lo…
Why should an AI care to spend time near a black hole, in order to 'have more flops for no effort'? That's the same as slowing down the AI's substrate, or putting it into suspend mode. If the non-AIs can survive for centuries, why can't the AIs? In other words, why does the AI care about the "still" in "still take centuries"?
If the AIs have interstellar war, they won't be bogged down in slowtime around a black hole. The ones in fasttime have more chances to control the computronium, and a faster response time to take advantage of whatever those compute cycles are being use for.
Re: What if the aliens we are seeking are AI?
#50I think emergence of life is a start of a ticking time bomb. If someone would look at earth from afar and observe the changes on a compressed time scale, one would see the earth 'lighting' up a bit as soon as intelligent life emerges. Life emerging on a planet is like a bomb's fuse getting lit. The bomb in this case being earth itself with its unique chemical composition. It is only a question of time when this bomb…
It may not be that hard for us to make the Earth unfit for our society, or even for humans as a life form.
However, I think it would be significantly harder for us to wipe out all life on the planet earth. I'm hard pressed to think of anything besides blowing up the planet, or grey goo (and arguably grey goo would just be another form of life).