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.

Comments

Well, duh

[0123456]

Hasn't this been common knowledge among SF readers for years?

Re:Life form?

[Waffle Iron]

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.

Re:This is worse than mythology.

[bluefoxlucid]

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.

von Neumann probes

[ColonelPanic]

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.