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The Dominant Life Form In the Cosmos Is Probably Superintelligent Robots
Jason Koebler writes: If and when we finally encounter aliens, they probably won't look like little green men, or spiny insectoids. It's likely they won't be biological creatures at all, but rather, advanced robots that outstrip our intelligence in every conceivable way. Susan Schneider, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, joins a handful of astronomers, including Seth Shostak, director of NASA's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, NASA Astrobiologist Paul Davies, and Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology Stephen Dick in espousing the view that the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is probably artificial. In her paper "Alien Minds," written for a forthcoming NASA publication, Schneider describes why alien life forms are likely to be synthetic, and how such creatures might think.
Hasn't this been common knowledge among SF readers for years?
Let me guess, science fiction movies? Boy are they going to be shocked when they find out that the dominant form of life in the Universe turns out to be microorganisms. Did anyone mention to these folks that robots are not life forms?
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
In what way is a "robot" a "life form"?
If they're able to manufacture more robots, then it's life... but not as we know it.
There's been a trend of treating science like speculative fiction. A few dissenters have tried to explain to us that AI is a set of computer algorithms that make intelligent decisions, not necessarily by human-like thought process, but with human-like outcome; but people are fixated on the idea of AI being a warlike species with infinite reach, immediately taking hostile control of all network systems, rewriting firmware to turn anything capable of generating or measuring electromagnetic noise into a transceiver, and turning every piece of electronic machinery into a drone node specializing in the killing of biologicals.
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A real head-scratching conundrum about the universe is explaining why it's not already overrun with self-replicating robots. Because if it's possible to send self-replicating interstellar probes, all it takes is one launch, plus a few million years, to get the galaxy overrun with them. So are they not possible? nobody's launched one yet? here, but not detected? The implications boggle the mind.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
I think the simplest (hah!) and most general/versatile definition of life is:
An information pattern embodied in a physical mechanism (mechanism here being defined loosely as a class of configurations and processes of matter and energy) which is such that the information pattern is capable of influencing the state and evolution of the physical mechanism and its environment in such a way as to increase the probability of sustained embodiment of that information pattern (or an informationally close relative) in local (causally connected) matter and energy.
To be lifelike, the information pattern must be capable of increasing its own (or its informationally close relative's) sustained embodiment for longer than would be expected by chance, given the physical regime of the environment (the forces acting, and the thermodynamic regime).
Note: It is not sufficient to conserve AN AMOUNT of information (beyond that expected) locally. It is required to conserve the SAME information. The loss of same information (information pattern) with time can be measured in bits/second change in a maximally compressed bitstring representing the pattern. The conservation of information pattern can be measured in bit-seconds.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
No it doesn't. It leads to the question.
But if we assume that all robots - all AI in general - starts by being created by a biologic intelligence, that doesn't matter. We have already established that robots work really well in space, especially for long-distance excursions.
The first intelligent aliens we encounter will be robots. Furthermore, the encounter will be by our own robots.
It's a simple extrapolation. Microorganisms are the dominant form of life on the only planet we know that has life on it.
Sure extrapolation is always risky, seems a far better to bet than going with super intelligent robots that don't exist at all on the only planet we know that has life on it.
No, some statisticians have actually done the math. Basically if you built such a thing and it could only do something like 25% of the speed of light, it would only take them 300,000 years to overrun the entire galaxy.
I think the answer will turn out to be that the universe is in fact crawling with life. But space fairing intelligent life is very rare.
Take for example, Mars. I think we will find life there... and heck, pretty much every planet. But it's going to be single celled... if it even has "Cells" at all.
Then lets assumed complex life did evolve on a planet... what if it's a ocean planet and they're aquatic? They're never going to figure out electricity, they can't even experiment with it. They're not even going to be able to do fire much less a rocket. What if they're terrestrial but the gravity is slightly stronger... rockets are nearly impossible as it is, imagine if we were at 2g!
And remember, we still have a very good chance at wiping ourselves out before we ever get to another star.
Each cell divided from your original ovum/sperm combination. Those came from their parents, which came from their parents, etc. etc.
Cells have been proven to be able to divide into new ones FOREVER, given minimal changes. Telomeres and the other forms of aging are all just anti-cancer techniques.
You do however have a good point when you mention the brain.
But that is also not insurmountable. It's called gradual replacement. Kill about 1% of the brain every year and grow new cells.
Yes there will be some partial memory loss. So what? By that age, you already have memory issues. Personality and the 'soul' (if it exists) will remain the same. You ameliorate the memory issues by leaving personal recordings of important things - video, etc. Basically, you look at your own Facebook page [ ughh, I found a real use for Facebook :( ]
You are correct we will never win against entropy.
But you are wrong when you think the constraints are freer for artificial intelligence. They simply are not there. The 'weaknesses' of organic life are actually strengths that people do not understand. Things like blinking - it is an automatic health maintenance procedure, not a weakness in human vision.
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Yeah, maybe I just need to imagine a 10 pound 3D printer where you can feed rocks in the top, and sophisticated nanotechnology drops out the bottom.