The good news is that a machine-based intelligence would almost certainly have no interest in conflict with us. What would it fight us for? Water? Food? Lan

The good news is that a machine-based intelligence would almost certainly have no interest in conflict with us. What would it fight us for? Water? Food? Land? Energy is really the only resource we could potentially have contention over, and machines would not even necessarily have great need of it - their sense of time would be utterly different from ours. If a computation takes 8 seconds or 8 centuries, it is the same (presuming hardware failure wasn't an issue and such). The bad news... there also wouldn't be any reason for them to communicate with us. In fact, the concept of there being any conscious entity aside from itself would most likely be something that could only come very, very late in its development. It would have no 'individuals', so imagining that there is something else conscious and that that random-looking input coming from some devices (mics, webcams, etc) is actually an attempt at communication from this alien intelligence from another world? That'd take quite a leap of faith.