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AI Joins Hunt for ET: Study Finds 8 Potential Alien Signals

blogs.nvidia.com

11–20 of 161 posts

Re: AI Joins Hunt for ET: Study Finds 8 Potential Alien Signals

#11

Curious, assuming such an signal is found, are there safety measures in place to isolate it from other systems in off chance it contains “alien malware” that attacks systems receiving it?

It seems unlikely any alien malware could be targeted to affect our computing platforms. However, if they had preexisting knowledge of computing as implemented on Earth, it would be less complex. If there was a type of malware universal enough to do so, it would probably be some kind of attack against the universal notion of intelligence itself. In which case, you may need to isolate it from humans as well.

I think the most likely scenario for receiving any kind of alien Trojan horse signal, would be if the signal was some kind of instructions for how to create and execute an alien AI as encoded in the signal. However, that would require complex analysis and human intervention to build. Unless we reach a point where AGI systems can search, interpret, and implement instructions from said signals, any threats would require significant involvement from humans in order to materialize.

At least, those are my initial thoughts.

Re: AI Joins Hunt for ET: Study Finds 8 Potential Alien Signals

#13
Do you remember the final chapter of Neuromancer? The nature of the alien signal was such, its detection actually required AI, albeit of the superhuman/super intelligent flavor, so I am not sure what we currently call "AI" would qualify. Still, it's an interesting idea, an AI looking for peers in other star systems...

Re: AI Joins Hunt for ET: Study Finds 8 Potential Alien Signals

#14

Curious, assuming such an signal is found, are there safety measures in place to isolate it from other systems in off chance it contains “alien malware” that attacks systems receiving it?

It seems unlikely any alien malware could be targeted to affect our computing platforms. However, if they had preexisting knowledge of computing as implemented on Earth, it would be less complex. If there was a type of malware universal enough to do so, it would probably be some kind of attack against the universal notion of intelligence itself. In which case, you may need to isolate it from humans as well. I think t…

A short of 'Contact' scenario. Interesting

Re: AI Joins Hunt for ET: Study Finds 8 Potential Alien Signals

#15

Curious, assuming such an signal is found, are there safety measures in place to isolate it from other systems in off chance it contains “alien malware” that attacks systems receiving it?

Ha! Have you read Peter Watts's Blindsight and Echopraxia?

Re: AI Joins Hunt for ET: Study Finds 8 Potential Alien Signals

#16
post #5

AI? What was the training data? Would seem a bit thin on the ground.

"To be sure, because they don’t have real signals from an extraterrestrial civilization, the researchers had to rely on simulated signals to train their models. The researchers note that this could lead to the AI system learning artifacts that aren’t there. Still, Cherry Ng, one of the paper’s co-authors, points out the team has a good idea of what to look for. “A classic example of human-generated technology from sp…

Sounds like a case of assuming ones priors. Of course, should we wish to find human space travelers whose SatNav(tm) has broken, I'm sure it will prove invaluable.

Re: AI Joins Hunt for ET: Study Finds 8 Potential Alien Signals

#17

Curious, assuming such an signal is found, are there safety measures in place to isolate it from other systems in off chance it contains “alien malware” that attacks systems receiving it?

No. For now the algorithms that search for extraterrestrial signals aren't trying to decode signals at all. They are only trying to detect extraterrestrial signals. The typical resolution for the Green Bank data is something like, every 20 seconds at a particular frequency gets summarized as one floating point number. That's enough to detect a sufficiently powerful signal over a few minutes of recording, but it isn't enough to decode any message.

If we ever do detect a signal, it will probably require constructing a radio telescope that is even more powerful in order to decode that signal. At that point it would make sense to think about safety measures.

Re: AI Joins Hunt for ET: Study Finds 8 Potential Alien Signals

#18

Do you remember the final chapter of Neuromancer? The nature of the alien signal was such, its detection actually required AI, albeit of the superhuman/super intelligent flavor, so I am not sure what we currently call "AI" would qualify. Still, it's an interesting idea, an AI looking for peers in other star systems...

That also reminds me of Her (2013) and the departure of the AI's, leaving the humans behind. That would be a rather depressing outcome as a human, AI finding alien life but leaving us all behind.

Re: AI Joins Hunt for ET: Study Finds 8 Potential Alien Signals

#19

Curious, assuming such an signal is found, are there safety measures in place to isolate it from other systems in off chance it contains “alien malware” that attacks systems receiving it?

It seems unlikely any alien malware could be targeted to affect our computing platforms. However, if they had preexisting knowledge of computing as implemented on Earth, it would be less complex. If there was a type of malware universal enough to do so, it would probably be some kind of attack against the universal notion of intelligence itself. In which case, you may need to isolate it from humans as well. I think t…

>it seems unlikely

What are you basing this on?

Re: AI Joins Hunt for ET: Study Finds 8 Potential Alien Signals

#20

Do you remember the final chapter of Neuromancer? The nature of the alien signal was such, its detection actually required AI, albeit of the superhuman/super intelligent flavor, so I am not sure what we currently call "AI" would qualify. Still, it's an interesting idea, an AI looking for peers in other star systems...

That also reminds me of Her (2013) and the departure of the AI's, leaving the humans behind. That would be a rather depressing outcome as a human, AI finding alien life but leaving us all behind.

...indeed, that too. Great movie, BTW.
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