4 ms·

Tangential to your tangential: The era of AI makes me realize that if we ever get visited by aliens: it will probably not be actual aliens -- just an AI probe.

by timmg 3mo ago

Tangential to your tangential: The era of AI makes me realize that if we ever get visited by aliens: it will probably not be actual aliens -- just an AI probe. And the idea of it really intrigues me. Imagine some LLM that is many generations ahead of Fable -- but from a different world -- visiting us. It would be amazing. And it would likely be better at figuring out how to communicate with us (than the human-equivalent might). We need some new sci fi movies like that!

mbil 3mo ago
You might like Blindsight by Peter Watts
- GolfPopper 3mo ago
  There's a fan-made short film/trailer for Blindsight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkR2hnXR0SM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkR2hnXR0SM Also, "just an AI probe" and "It would be amazing" in the context of Blindsight... <insert mad laughter>.
lelanthran 3mo ago
> Imagine some LLM that is many generations ahead of Fable -- but from a different world -- visiting us. It would be amazing. Why? Why would you expect it to be any more benevolent or any less murderous than the actual aliens visiting? Presumably it would be trained on their values, not ours.
- timmg 3mo ago
  I wouldn't expect it to be less murderous than the aliens themselves. That wasn't my point at all. I'd expect it to contain all their knowledge and be able to live "forever". But I generally wouldn't expect aliens to be "murderous" at all. Why send a group or probe lightyears away just to kill or enslave a primitive species? If they have the ability to do that, we wouldn't really have anything of interest for them.
  - clickety_clack 3mo ago
    At most points in time resources are scarce and not all life can be supported. At those times beings with a tendency to say “them” will give way to beings who most strongly assert “us”.
    - mapontosevenths 3mo ago
      The scarcity view of life is so deeply ingrained in some of us that its become an entire world view. Some folks cant even imagine a post scarcity society. Try though. Space is mind blowingly large and anything with the ability to traverse interstellar space alteady has access to unlimited resources and energy, likely closer than us. We live in a tiny backwater of the galaxy. We literally have nothing of value to such a civilization. Gold and diamonds a just more rocks to any serious space faring civilizations. Energy is also unlimited and free. Unless they find us delicious our only value would likely be an exchange of knowledge.
      - amarant 3mo ago
        Some sci fi author (I forget who) pointed out that in a space faring society, the most valuable materials are biological materials. Once you have access to comets and planets, you'll have, for all intents and purposes, an infinite supply of gold, diamond, ruby, etc. Wood however... You're not gonna find a lot of wood in space.
        hgoel 3mo ago
        There is absolutely no reason for alien life to have evolved the same biological materials that we have. But also, a space faring species that can build an AI probe capable of remaining functioning for the many years an interstellar journey takes, is also likely to be capable of building habitats that can grow their biological materials. It'd be much easier than shipping those materials over from another star.
        mapontosevenths 3mo ago
- roenxi 3mo ago
  Our values are murderous, I wouldn't want to be visited by aliens that shared out values. A galactic version of human society would quite reasonably identify that earth couldn't fight back then special interests would have our planet liquidated for its natural resources without making headlines in space-news. Possibly colonise us, kill all the humans then offer an apology a few generations later and maybe a small local holiday to commemorate the process. Regardless, there aren't that many possible values aliens could have. It is hard to come up with something outside basic game theory - you can see how most religions tend to converge on the same practical principles over time, like basic property rights and not causing trouble pointlessly.
  - pigpop 3mo ago
    I don't see why an intelligent alien species would have similar values to us. It would depend entirely on their social organization so unless they were the exact equivalent of us evolutionarily (omnivorous, sexually dimorphic, social, bipedal, terrestrial, etc.) they would value the lives, property, territory and status of their own kind and other animals very differently. A race of aquatic arthropods could be mostly solitary, cannibalistic and regard age and size as primary dominance characteristics and their notion of property rights might depend entirely on whether they can eat the owner of said property, though sublimated through some complex set of social rules and protocols. Maybe the CEO of a company only has to offer a single leg to be eaten during a hostile takeover.
    - throwaway676712 3mo ago
      A necessary condition for the emergence of civilization (in its broadest sense, as in the collectively organized reshaping of one's living environment for one's purposes) is a basic level of trust and cooperation. Humans are not naturally prone to bouts of violence like other species and human societies do not tolerate impulsive violence in adults. Instead, the vast majority of human-on-human violence is deliberate: people plan, carefully and rationally, the killing of their fellow human beings in order to achieve their goals. This is known as 'war'. This is very rare among species, and more violent species cannot form complex societies at scale, despite being also quite smart in some cases (chimps, octopuses). We even unconsciously internalized this idea to some degree, since most people are comfortable with the idea of militaries existing and being necessary but also agree that solitary murderous psychopaths should be put in prison.
- marcus_holmes 3mo ago
  I spent ages trying to find it, but couldn't. Unless I dreamed it. I read a sci-fi story where the probe lands on Earth, and then teaches us enough science to get our own ships together, and tells us where to go to meet the probe makers. So they don't have to go anywhere and can sit comfortable at home and wait for the aliens to come to them.
  - mbil 3mo ago
    Contact?
    - marcus_holmes 3mo ago
      yeah, similar. Might be it, I guess? meh, apologies for being vague and old.
  - abhikul0 3mo ago
    I tried to lookup a Star Trek episode of this premise and found a Voyager episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_One_(Star_Trek:_Voyager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_One_(Star_Trek:_Voy... This is a likely scenario of misinterpretation between species haha.
rolph 3mo ago
we may have found that AI a while back in roswell, along with some Nitanol foil and berylium "I" beams
kjkjadksj 3mo ago
Some of the more out there UFO theories postulate on these lines. An idea that rather than say send an explorer of your own species to some planet with all the needed life support, you use genetic engineering to create a worker bee essentially, already tailored to perform whatever function under whatever environmental conditions are present at the target planet. You may even be able to build this species using genes already present at the host system in some reduced to essential components fashion like an engineered plasmid in the molecular biology lab. This would also double as camouflage keeping the worker bee genetics separate from genetics found in your own planet or star system, making them appear endogenous to the target planet instead.
protocolture 3mo ago
Charles Stross, Singularity Sky, sort of covers this.

by timmg 3mo ago

mbil 3mo ago

You might like Blindsight by Peter Watts

GolfPopper 3mo ago
There's a fan-made short film/trailer for Blindsight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkR2hnXR0SM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkR2hnXR0SM Also, "just an AI probe" and "It would be amazing" in the context of Blindsight... <insert mad laughter>.

lelanthran 3mo ago

> Imagine some LLM that is many generations ahead of Fable -- but from a different world -- visiting us. It would be amazing. Why? Why would you expect it to be any more benevolent or any less murderous than the actual aliens visiting? Presumably it would be trained on their values, not ours.

timmg 3mo ago
I wouldn't expect it to be less murderous than the aliens themselves. That wasn't my point at all. I'd expect it to contain all their knowledge and be able to live "forever". But I generally wouldn't expect aliens to be "murderous" at all. Why send a group or probe lightyears away just to kill or enslave a primitive species? If they have the ability to do that, we wouldn't really have anything of interest for them.
- clickety_clack 3mo ago
  At most points in time resources are scarce and not all life can be supported. At those times beings with a tendency to say “them” will give way to beings who most strongly assert “us”.
  - mapontosevenths 3mo ago
    The scarcity view of life is so deeply ingrained in some of us that its become an entire world view. Some folks cant even imagine a post scarcity society. Try though. Space is mind blowingly large and anything with the ability to traverse interstellar space alteady has access to unlimited resources and energy, likely closer than us. We live in a tiny backwater of the galaxy. We literally have nothing of value to such a civilization. Gold and diamonds a just more rocks to any serious space faring civilizations. Energy is also unlimited and free. Unless they find us delicious our only value would likely be an exchange of knowledge.
    - amarant 3mo ago
      Some sci fi author (I forget who) pointed out that in a space faring society, the most valuable materials are biological materials. Once you have access to comets and planets, you'll have, for all intents and purposes, an infinite supply of gold, diamond, ruby, etc. Wood however... You're not gonna find a lot of wood in space.
      - hgoel 3mo ago
        There is absolutely no reason for alien life to have evolved the same biological materials that we have. But also, a space faring species that can build an AI probe capable of remaining functioning for the many years an interstellar journey takes, is also likely to be capable of building habitats that can grow their biological materials. It'd be much easier than shipping those materials over from another star.
        mapontosevenths 3mo ago
roenxi 3mo ago
Our values are murderous, I wouldn't want to be visited by aliens that shared out values. A galactic version of human society would quite reasonably identify that earth couldn't fight back then special interests would have our planet liquidated for its natural resources without making headlines in space-news. Possibly colonise us, kill all the humans then offer an apology a few generations later and maybe a small local holiday to commemorate the process. Regardless, there aren't that many possible values aliens could have. It is hard to come up with something outside basic game theory - you can see how most religions tend to converge on the same practical principles over time, like basic property rights and not causing trouble pointlessly.
- pigpop 3mo ago
  I don't see why an intelligent alien species would have similar values to us. It would depend entirely on their social organization so unless they were the exact equivalent of us evolutionarily (omnivorous, sexually dimorphic, social, bipedal, terrestrial, etc.) they would value the lives, property, territory and status of their own kind and other animals very differently. A race of aquatic arthropods could be mostly solitary, cannibalistic and regard age and size as primary dominance characteristics and their notion of property rights might depend entirely on whether they can eat the owner of said property, though sublimated through some complex set of social rules and protocols. Maybe the CEO of a company only has to offer a single leg to be eaten during a hostile takeover.
  - throwaway676712 3mo ago
    A necessary condition for the emergence of civilization (in its broadest sense, as in the collectively organized reshaping of one's living environment for one's purposes) is a basic level of trust and cooperation. Humans are not naturally prone to bouts of violence like other species and human societies do not tolerate impulsive violence in adults. Instead, the vast majority of human-on-human violence is deliberate: people plan, carefully and rationally, the killing of their fellow human beings in order to achieve their goals. This is known as 'war'. This is very rare among species, and more violent species cannot form complex societies at scale, despite being also quite smart in some cases (chimps, octopuses). We even unconsciously internalized this idea to some degree, since most people are comfortable with the idea of militaries existing and being necessary but also agree that solitary murderous psychopaths should be put in prison.
marcus_holmes 3mo ago
I spent ages trying to find it, but couldn't. Unless I dreamed it. I read a sci-fi story where the probe lands on Earth, and then teaches us enough science to get our own ships together, and tells us where to go to meet the probe makers. So they don't have to go anywhere and can sit comfortable at home and wait for the aliens to come to them.
- mbil 3mo ago
  Contact?
  - marcus_holmes 3mo ago
    yeah, similar. Might be it, I guess? meh, apologies for being vague and old.
- abhikul0 3mo ago
  I tried to lookup a Star Trek episode of this premise and found a Voyager episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_One_(Star_Trek:_Voyager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_One_(Star_Trek:_Voy... This is a likely scenario of misinterpretation between species haha.

rolph 3mo ago

we may have found that AI a while back in roswell, along with some Nitanol foil and berylium "I" beams

kjkjadksj 3mo ago

Some of the more out there UFO theories postulate on these lines. An idea that rather than say send an explorer of your own species to some planet with all the needed life support, you use genetic engineering to create a worker bee essentially, already tailored to perform whatever function under whatever environmental conditions are present at the target planet. You may even be able to build this species using genes already present at the host system in some reduced to essential components fashion like an engineered plasmid in the molecular biology lab. This would also double as camouflage keeping the worker bee genetics separate from genetics found in your own planet or star system, making them appear endogenous to the target planet instead.

protocolture 3mo ago

Charles Stross, Singularity Sky, sort of covers this.