Look For AI, Not Aliens

krou writes "Writing in Acta Astronautica, Seti astronomer Seth Shostak argues that we should be looking for 'sentient machines' rather than biological life. In an interview with the BBC, he said, 'If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you. But within a few hundred years of inventing radio — at least if we're any example — you invent thinking machines; we're probably going to do that in this century. So you've invented your successors and only for a few hundred years are you... a "biological" intelligence.' As a result, he says 'we could spend at least a few percent of our time... looking in the directions that are maybe not the most attractive in terms of biological intelligence but maybe where sentient machines are hanging out.'"

Comments

Re:Also a better way to CYA

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than broadcast from home, broadcast via a proxy, so that if hostile intelligence finds your broadcast, they won't necessarily find you.

send all the niggers to that proxy planet. then the aliens can find them and the niggers can smoke all the crack, commit all the crimes, make all the gangsta rap and lower all the test score averages they want. it's a classic win-win.

First place to look

[Anonymous Coward]

is uranus!

Re:It gets sillier all the time.

[Locke2005]

I have to agree, I've met lots of "humans" that quite obviously are not sentient. In fact, many of them are currently quite active in the Tea Party.