Chatbots based on artificial intelligence will be able to explain human nature and life on Earth to aliens. This is stated in an article for Scientific American by Frank Marchis, Director of Civil Science at the SETI Institute, and Ignacio Lopez-Francos, a NASA researcher.
Scientists have described the potential benefits of sending artificial intelligence into deep space to communicate with potential intelligent life.
In 1977, the United States launched the Voyager-1 spacecraft with a 12-inch (about 30 cm) gold-plated record on board with sound and video signals describing our planet. In 2023, it was located at a distance of about 15 billion miles (24.14 billion km). So far, no one has answered.
Marcis and Lopez-Francos think it's time to update the message. According to them, artificial intelligence will help aliens ask questions and get answers to them, studying information about our planet more deeply.
"This would allow extraterrestrial civilizations to indirectly communicate with us and learn about us without experiencing problems due to the huge distance in space with corresponding communication delays equal to the duration of human life," the experts noted.
Among the disadvantages of the idea, scientists have highlighted the risk of encountering hostile aliens who can turn knowledge against us.
There is also a question of transferring artificial intelligence capable of working without the Internet over long distances. There are two options to solve this problem:
The old method of sending a spacecraft with an AI device on board;transmission of a full-size AI model into space using radio or laser communication.Voyager-1 took almost 50 years to move away by 24.14 billion km. At this speed, it will take about 3084 years to reach the Alpha Centauri star system closest to Earth.
NASA has laser devices for transmitting data at speeds of several hundred Mbit/s. But scientists note that "interstellar communication using existing technologies will be reduced to 100 bits/s."
This means that it will take centuries for a small AI model like Llama-3-70B from Meta to be sent to a neighboring galaxy. Due to certain data compression methods, the time can be reduced to 20 years, experts noted.
Previously, scientists have developed a neural network that filters out interference and more effectively finds unusual cosmic radio signals in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Recall that AI has discovered a thousand previously unknown supernovae caused by explosions of dying stars.
In 2021, Australian scientists created an AI that allows them to classify tens of thousands of galaxies in a few seconds.