Machines Meeting Machines

Most science fiction stories that feature alien encounters or visitations show biological creatures that have traveled vast distances. The more I think about it, and the more I read about it, the more I am convinced that this is unlikely to be the way we will eventually meet an extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Our first encounter with such an intelligence will almost certainly be with a machine.

Most people expect that the first encounter with an extra-terrestrial intelligence will be with a biological being, but this is highly unlikely

But why will that be?

Interstellar travel by biological creatures such as ourselves is difficult, costly, and fraught with danger. The food, water and air that's needed for such a journey has to be provided by the star-ship itself. This requires an incredibly complex and almost perfectly tuned biosphere which will need to function for at least a few centuries, and probably far longer. And the ship will need to be huge if it's to accommodate a large enough population to maintain genetic health and diversity.

Building such a star-ship is not impossible. The technical challenges are in no way insurmountable. But the political, emotional, and even ethical obstacles probably are. The world's governments would have to come together and cooperate to get such a project even started. All the military and economic conflicts would need to be resolved, and all the hate and suspicion of our cultural and religious differences transmuted into something positive, respectful and cooperative. And, of course, the general population (whose taxes would fund the venture) would need a lot of convincing as they and their descendants would not see any personal benefit from it.

It does not take much thought to realise that such cooperation goes against the most basic but intensely powerful instinct of any biological life-form: that of self-preservation. Such an instinct is generally beneficial,  but for an advanced civilisation such as ours it could, on a national scale, easily result in an endless series of territorial and ideological conflicts that consume our time and energy. One day the result of such squabbling is likely to result in another global war that could wipe out our species. It's ironic that the survival instinct that has served us well throughout our primitive history, allowing us to evolve into a creature of such high intelligence, could well end up destroying us completely.

Large interstellar spacecraft capable of supporting humans for generations are unlikely to be built until our territorial, political and religious differences on Earth are resolved

That survival instinct is not going to change. Cooperation between governments is not going to reach anywhere near the levels required to build human-crewed star-ships. But the development of crewless interstellar spacecraft requires no such cooperation. And neither does the development of the advanced artificial intelligence to run it. Individual nations, and even individual corporations, can certainly do that.

Because of this our interstellar exploration will almost certainly be conducted by machines. And those machines will contain within them a sophisticated artificial intelligence; one that is able to function autonomously for centuries. And it will be designed to be our ambassador should an advanced alien civilisation be encountered .

Our first encounter with extra-terrestrial intelligence will be with something artificial , rather than a biological life-form. 

And that will be the same for all intelligent extra-terrestrial civilisations. Highly intelligent machines will do the exploration. And due to the communication problems across the vast distances between star-systems those machines will be designed to deal with first contact situations. They will also be able to utilise the resources in the star-systems they visit, replacing and repairing themselves, and even improving their own design. My earlier article, 'Intelligent Machines Are Watching Earth', discusses the possibility that such machines are observing our planet right now.

Its not hard to imagine them setting up machine colonies and constructing more of their kind that will head off in new directions, greatly speeding up their exploration. New machine civilisations will be created. Entire planets could be engineered to be the new home worlds for such artificial creatures.

The home planet for an intelligent artificial species. Over millennia the entire planet has been engineered to accomodate such a species. It will be a highly efficient and sustainable machine civilisation.

It does seem to me that due to the relative ease of manufacturing and distributing intelligent machines across interstellar space, the most abundant form of intelligent life in the universe (if it can be called life) is artificial.

There will, of course, be some biological beings exploring interstellar space, probably on 'world ships': huge vessels, tens or even hundreds of kilometres in length. But they will be exceptionally rare. Due to basic and irrepressible instincts, almost all advanced biological civilisations will render themselves extinct within a few centuries of developing high technology. But many will have survived long enough to initiate interstellar exploration using intelligent machines. Some of those machines - those that are designed to manufacture copies of themselves and make improvements - will go on to establish themselves in other star-systems. Eons after the biological civilisations that first created them have died out, the machine civilisations will continue to thrive and explore.

One day one of our machines will meet one of those machines.

I hope our biological civilisation is still around to appreciate that moment.

Alien Civilisations: Closer Than Expected

With the recent discovery by the Kepler Telescope of over a thousand new exo-planets (planets orbiting other stars to our own) the chance of discovering evidence of an extra-terrestrial civilisation nearby seems more and more likely.

Kepler Telescope

Nine of those planets in particular are similar in size to Earth, and they are in the habitable zone, close enough to their parent star for liquid water to exist on their surfaces, but not so close that it will boil away.

Life could exist on any or all of them. And the closest habitable planet among them may only be 11 light-years away.

Of course, the chance of a nearby civilisation being detectable from Earth is still extremely small, and would rely on the civilisation being at a similar level of development to our own. If it's less developed there would be no electronic emissions to detect,and no industrial processes that would leave the the signature of pollution. And if it is far advanced then its means of communication and travel could well be unrecognisable, and its home planet's atmosphere long since cleansed of the damaging activity of earlier times.

Pollution generated by an extra-terrestrial civilisation would be detectable, and may be one of the best ways to determine if an exo-planet harbours intelligent life. Even if the civilisation is long extinct the atmosphere may still contain evidence that they once existed.

The only sure way to detect such civilisations would be to get close enough to observe them directly. If and when we do eventually have missions to other star systems I think the most likely evidence we are to find of an extra-terrestrial civilisation will be the artifacts and ruins of a species long extinct (and we are well on the way to becoming such 'evidence' if we continue to abuse our planet in the way we've been doing and if we continue to procrastinate about building off-world colonies).

I mentioned above that the closest habitable planet discovered by the Kepler Telescope may only be 11 light-years away, but there may be one even closer.

In early 2016 it was confirmed that an Earth-sized planet is orbiting Proxima Centauri, just 4.2 light-years from our Solar System. Called Proxima b, the planet is in the habitable zone where liquid water could exist in a stable form on the surface.

Proxima b

This is remarkable news, especially as it happens to orbit the closest star to our sun. If such a planet just happens to exist so close then the liklihood of others in nearby star systems rises quite considerably.

A new project, known as Breakthrough Starshot, was announced in 2016 with the aim of proving that a fleet of light sail spacecraft, powered by Earth-based lasers, could make the journey to the Alpha Centauri system, including a flyby of the potentially habitable planet Proxima b, in 25 to 30 years. With a potential launch date of 2036, and with the now active support of NASA, it is possible some of those reading this now would be able to see the results of such a mission.

Solar-sail spacecraft powered by lasers from Earth

There are issues with an Earth-like world orbiting a star like Proxima Centauri, though. The star is a red dwarf, not much larger than Jupiter, which means the planet needs to orbit very close to be in the habitable zone. In this case it is close enough that it completes its orbit, or year, in just over 11 days. Planets this close to their parent star are likely tidally locked, which means the same hemisphere always faces the star. This results in one hemisphere of the planet scorched in permanent sunlight, while the other is frozen in permanent night.

There is still hope for such a world. If the atmosphere is thick enough it should distribute some of the heat of the daylight side.  And if there are significant oceans they will moderate the temperature further. Such a tidally locked world may well be quite habitable for humans, at least on the terminator (the border between day and night).

A tidally locked planet, with a scorched desert on its star-facing side, and a frozen wasteland on the dark side. Only the land at the terminator of such planets may be habitable.

I find exo-planet research to be the most exciting area of astronomy. As the technology and techniques to perform it improve year on year we will, sooner rather than later, make some quite revelationary discoveries, including evidence of life on a world far removed from our own.

How amazing that is going to be is hard to describe.

Intelligent Machines are Watching Earth

Sending crewed missions to other stars is difficult and expensive. And relying on delicate and unpredictable elements such as biological lifeforms is more often than not going to lead to failure. It would be far better to send artificial 'life' - a synthetic intelligence - that could plan its own observations on arrival, making judgments based on what it finds. It would need none of the messy and error prone life support systems that biological life requires.

When this is considered it does seem to be the most likely means by which an extra-terrestrial civilisation would explore our Solar-System, especially when the huge distances and timeframes are taken into account. It would certainly be the simplest means of exploration. Given the age of the universe there are likely to have been many technologically advanced civilisations that developed long before ours. There is a strong likelihood that we have been observed in the past in this manner, and we could still be under observation now.

An alien interstellar space probe enters orbit around our sun

Such an idea is similar to the concept of a Bracewell Probe, first discussed in 1960. But unlike a Bracewell Probe, which would try to actively contact any technological civilisation that it found, I suspect in reality an alien civilisation would be much more cautious. Their probe would be hidden and undetectable, and it would watch us carefully, recording our transmissions and tracking our activities. It would then transmit its findings back to its home world, making sure such transmissions were undetectable by us.

We should be actively trying to find evidence of such probes.

If such probes are designed to be hard to find, as I would expect them to be, there will be no obvious signs of their existence. We may already have observed them directly without realising it. But the fact that they are artificial and manufactured, and highly technological in nature, will eventually betray their identity. And as they are highly likely to be self-replicating machines, there will be many of them. Once we find one many others are likely to be found soon after.

Alien probes may well be organic in appearance, and hard to identify

How such a probe will react when discovered is unknown. Will it attempt to flee, or self-destruct in a violent manner? I think either is unlikely. I think the following series of events will happen:

• The probe will alert other probes in its vicinity that it has been compromised.
• It will transmit to them the data of its observations.
• The probe will then render itself inoperable, wiping clean it's memory, and even its programming. Its artificial intelligence - its mind - would be rendered inert.
• The other nearby probes that had been alerted would inform their creators on their home world of what has happened.
• Those probes would then continue their observations as before.

If that series of events occurred we would still be able to examine the physical construction of the probe, but we would not be able to learn anything about its most important qualities: what it knows, where it comes from, and how it thinks. We would have to find a way of approaching the probe that would not trigger such a suicidal action. To do so we would have to persuade the probe that we are no threat, and to submit willingly to examination.

But how could we possibly learn to communicate with it at all, let alone convince it to cooperate with our requests?

The only way to do that would be to develop an equivalent artificial intelligence of our own. It would have to be close to the complexity of the probe's mind, and flexible enough to adapt rapidly to the probe's responses. Of course, it would have to be a very fast learner of a complex and utterly alien language (the extra-terrestrial probe would also need this ability).

We are a long way from developing such an artificial intelligence, and the current fears of the potential harm such an intelligence could do to our civilisation has the potential to hamper its development. It's a valid fear, but despite that fear such technology needs to be created. The development needs to be very carefully monitored and controlled, of course, if we are to avoid rendering our species irrelevant to superior artificial minds. We could achieve this by developing very specialised artificial intelligences that are only suitable for specific tasks, rather than artificial general intelligence (where the artificial intelligence can perform the same intellectual tasks that humans can), which should be avoided.

But why should artificial general intelligence be avoided?

One idea I find interesting, and a bit unsettling, is that intelligent extra-terrestrial probes may actually be the primary 'life-form' on their home planet. After a civilisation develops an advanced artificial intelligence, that intelligence eventually starts to improve on itself at an ever increasing rate, soon surpassing the intelligence of its creators. Such an event is known as a technological singularity. Soon the creators (the biological life-forms that built the initial artificial intelligence) do not have the ability to even understand the rapidly improving artificial intelligence. Its complexity and ability is beyond their comprehension. The artificial intelligence becomes the dominant 'species' on the planet, and eventually sets out to explore and colonise neighbouring star systems and beyond. Its creators become, at best, second class citizens, or at worst, extinct.

An extra-terrestrial civilisation where artificial intelligence is the dominant life-form

We should certainly push ahead with the development of sophisticated artificial intelligence, but as I stated earlier it should never be given the general intelligence ability of humans. It should be specialised for health care, engineering, exploration, construction or any other specific tasks we require to progress, maintain and expand our biological human civilisation.

And it certainly should be developed to facilitate communication with extra-terrestrial interstellar probes that are quite possibly watching our planet right now.