My podcast assignment focused on empathetic artificial intelligence so the different case studies I was exposed to range from an AI lawyer or news anchor. So, I was quite surprised to find an article in American Scientist discussing how AI is going to be used to detect extraterrestrials.
When looking for extraterrestrial life, scientists begin with the assumption that aliens are trying to talk to us and that these aliens think we’ll understand their messages. Currently, researchers comb through piles of data to identify anomalies, however AI is being brought in to find anomalies that humans may have missed and see if there is a pattern to these anomalies. The hope of using AI is to stop working on the assumption that aliens are communicating with us, but instead be able to identify aliens through signals sent by the functioning of their technologically advanced civilizations.
Two big questions that this new research raises are what is intelligence and are we prioritizing finding a specific kind of intelligence.Only recently have people begun seeing how intelligent non-humans on Earth are. There’s a book called “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?” by Frans de Waal that discusses how the complexities of animal’s intelligence and how animal’s intelligence has been underestimated by humans for so long. Some scientists believe that extraterrestrial life could be so different from what is on Earth or that these aliens might not be as technologically advanced as the aforementioned AI would be searching for.
A big challenge with using AI to identify extraterrestrial life is that whatever biases we have we may influence our AI and thus be unable to find out any new information. For example, many humans view aliens as like humans especially with the new assumption of tracking aliens by signals from their technologically advanced civilizations. Like what if aliens are not as technologically advanced as media and entertainment has caused us to believe and causes us to miss out on identifying aliens. Another reason for concern is most AI learns how to complete its task by sorting through data, however these researchers are hoping that the AI will be creative enough to identify what the researchers think these radio signals might look like, but also the opposite of that. This work has already paid off as an AI at Breakthrough Listen has already identified 300 new radio bursts last year and it looks like other astronomy researchers will be using AI to detect exoplanets.
This article reminded me of our reading on “Where Good Ideas Come From” by Steven Johnson as it looks like astronomy researchers are trying to change their network from a solid one where researchers only followed those two aforementioned assumptions to find extraterrestrial life to a more gaseous one where they aren’t even aware of how their AI may change their research practices. It makes me wonder whether automation and machine learning is forcing all industries and research to move towards more gaseous networks and reflect on whether the skills I’m developing will enable me to be successful in this new network.
I wanted to end this article with a question for readers: With Trump’s interest in creating a Space Force and the increase in the private sector space industry like SpaceX, is this AI research an authoritarian or democratic technology and what are the ramifications of it being the one you’ve chosen?
Sources:
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/ai-and-the-detection-of-extraterrestrial-life
https://theconversation.com/can-artificial-intelligence-help-find-alien-intelligence-94375