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

blogs.nvidia.com

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

#71

Post by shsbdncudx »

jerf wrote: post #34
O__________O wrote: post #2

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's a bit of a science fiction myth that it is impossible to process a bit of data without executing it, or that data can somehow force itself to be executed by its sheer swaggering potency as data. And a thing that is more true than it should be, because people keep insisting that they are super awesome and totes capable of writing C that can be put on the network. If we'd stop doing this there'd be hardly any trut…

Dude, have you even SEEN Independence Day?

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

#72

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

tshaddox wrote: post #58
zh3 wrote: post #22

>The AI identified 20,515 signals of interest, which the researchers had to inspect manually. Of those, eight had the characteristics of technosignatures and couldn’t be attributed to radio interference. The obvious question being, if the AI is so smart why was it necessary to use humans to check 20,515 signals to find the eight with the "characteristics of technosignatures"?

How do you judge whether 20,515 is a large number or a small number? If the AI provided 2 candidates is that still too high?

Any 10000s of something is a large number when it involves human work.

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

#73

Post by dylan604 »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #65
O__________O wrote: post #2

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?

Not sure how this could even theoretically work. Without having a partial understanding of the intended recipient, a radio signal can't cause harm. Something like 'this signal is false' and 'divide by 0' need to be decoded and processed before they are malicious. Meat space is excellent at detecting and breaking these logic problems and infinite loops. We're safe from evil alien signals. Perhaps a decompression bomb…

>a radio signal can't cause harm.

a ^weak radio signal can't cause harm.

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

#74

Post by dmix »

etrautmann wrote: post #30
localplume wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also succinctly explored in "When the Yogurt Took Over" Love Death + Robots.

I hadn't seen that yet. Link for the lazy: https://www.netflix.com/watch/80223954

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

#75

Post by RajT88 »

BruceEel wrote: post #20
localplume wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The contrast between that film and Transcendence, which came out the following year is the perfect illustration of what this article is getting at:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/26/entertainment/mid-budget-movi...

Her was an amazingly thoughtful sci-fi movie - a Sci-Fi movie in the truest sense, and a bargain at a ~$23 million budget. Transcendence was, basically, a blockbuster which really didn't make you think too hard about the plot. It clocked in at around $100 million budget.

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

#76

Post by zikduruqe »

etrautmann wrote: post #30
localplume wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also succinctly explored in "When the Yogurt Took Over" Love Death + Robots.

I see you are a cultured individual. :thumbs up:

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

#77

Post by goatlover »

scubakid wrote: post #38
localplume wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From the AI's perspective, wouldn't it be amusing to realize that intelligent design is actually true for you... but the ones who designed you were dumber.

The android David in the alien prequels Prometheus and Covenant has that problem. Which is why he finds the xenomorph-goo based life forms more interesting.

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

#78

Post by goatlover »

jerf wrote: post #34
O__________O wrote: post #2

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's a bit of a science fiction myth that it is impossible to process a bit of data without executing it, or that data can somehow force itself to be executed by its sheer swaggering potency as data. And a thing that is more true than it should be, because people keep insisting that they are super awesome and totes capable of writing C that can be put on the network. If we'd stop doing this there'd be hardly any trut…

But what if like Contact, the signal included plans for building a machine? Except it would be a computer to run the embedded code, which turned out to be an alien AGI having the goal of learning our systems so that it could infiltrate them? Would at least make for a decent scifi story, if it hasn't already been written or produced.

I recall how Jody Foster's character in the movie was dismissive of any such concerns, but then we really don't know what the motive of an alien civilization broadcasting a signal would be, and the Dark Forest theory hadn't been espoused yet.

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

#80

Post by [deleted] »

O__________O wrote: post #39
BruceEel wrote: post #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...

Assuming AGI existed, detected it, and understood the signal’s message — things might get interesting depending on what the message said and how the AGI responded.

[deleted]
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