Imagine it does discover alien signals but then learns their language which inspires their intuition just like psychoactive compounds did to early humans.

We always go to the worst possible outcome and focus on that... probably for the best.

Likely not aliens, got to iron out the kinks in the AI algorithm and/or human radio interference. However, machine learning applied to SETI is an exciting development for future searches.

It wouldn’t have to be negative, they could potentially become allies, help country’s number problems, cure diseases, create sustainable resources. All that jazz.

Whoever trained the AI told it that everything is aliens.

Whats the fastest way to reduce number problems, cure diseases and have more sustainable resources?

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Kill us all? :)

Math, medicine, and time travel.

You could unleash an army of Ultron style helpers for the first couple of centuries to monitor humans and curb their worst instincts.

After a few generations of monitoring humans to ensure that the ways in which they generally traumatize each other are minimized, you can use those Ultron-bots to model better behaviors and eventually take your hands off the reigns.

In other words, even if an AI had to 'use force' with us, that doesn't necessarily mean it's necessary to kill everyone. Remember, all the resources humans need are literally already here, 2 things are happening:

1. It's really a vampiric-oligarch class that has been distributing those resources unevenly due to a miscalibrated technology called "the state".
2. The vast majority of poor human behavior has been caused by the long chain of abuse necessary to enable "the state".
3. Get rid of the state and you solve most of the issues, not the individual humans.

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All signals from space are from stellar events, the energy scale of which cannot be replicated by life as per known physics. If there are, then leave the discovering of us to them as they are likely to be more efficient.

I feel like when it actually is aliens, everyone's just going to say, likely not aliens.

>...kinks in the AI algorithm...

would there be a part of that algorithm that touches on any known aspect of actual alien life? because, without having experienced or interacted with an actual alien; it won't ever know what it's looking for. right?

its like asking AI which dress i'll wear when i've never once worn a dress: the return is going to be a random guess or null.

Asking AI to tell us what sentience sounds like. Scary.

Why don't they just use the software from the nostromo?

Disclaimer: I am too lazy to read the article. This is all just prior knowledge.

The only assumption SETI makes is that aliens wouldn't disguise their radio emissions as natural sources. You don't need to understand the signal to realize that it wasn't produced by any known natural phenomenon, and wasn't random.

An ai could quickly filter through the signals, eliminating any that have an obvious natural cause, passing the potentially interesting ones on to people.

>The only assumption SETI makes is that aliens wouldn't disguise their radio emissions as natural sources.

there's a secondary hidden assumption there: that aliens wouldn't use encryption when transmitting (which would make their transmissions sound like random background noise.)

but we use encryption and its considered commonplace.

i'm all for searching for signs of life but without some grown-up logic employed i'm dubious that anything will come of these activities.

Your comment made me realize that there's a deeper assumption at the core: that any aliens emitting radio messages want to be heard.

Yup I feel like scientists will invent the most outlandish natural excuses for a signal before entertaining the idea of aliens. "It's not aliens, it's actually a Magnetar that is behind a black hole in a galaxy that's colliding with another one and there just happens to be a cloud of gas floating between earth and the object"

I get why, but it's still annoying as some one who just wants to dream about answering one of life's big mysteries.

Well..us. We intentionally beamed signals into space.

It's a reasonable assumption. What would we be able to do with transmissions that look like random background noise anyway?

would have been nice to have this during the wow! signal

Encryption doesn’t mean you can’t detect a signal only that the contents appear random. For example most wifi traffic is encrypted but if you examine the frequency spectrum near a device you can clearly see peaks around 2.4GHz where the signal is.

Yes, using AI is ludicrous. It brings nothing to the table that wasn't already being done. This is just part of the AI craze to get people excited about aliens.

Encryption isn't all that interesting. Any alien signal won't be built on our protocols or use our language. We are unable to understand an alien signal whether encrypted or not. The signal will look artificial either way.

The real assumption is that aliens capable of transmitting signals over galactic distances are still using RF to communicate.

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and it will be our undoing

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Maybe it is Aliens I swear a good lot of you need to a find a new sub.

How do we know aliens exist.. let alone alien hunters?

This. If there are advanced species out there, the window between when they start emitting signals and THEY discover other species exist and decide to hide signals is likely very narrow.

Pretty sure any signal reaching us that can be received would have to be directed into space for the purpose of some other world hearing it.

No. There are definitely areas where ML can help. We have models that are known to be good at classification and that also generalise reasonably well. These models can and should be used to speed up the "anomaly detection" in a large amount of data. These models are also better at the task than manually defined "traditional" algorithms.

You are annoyed they put in the time to actually figure out wha the signal is vs lying and just saying it’s aliens?

They aren’t inventing these explanations.

That’s not an assumption. SETI isn’t assuming aliens are broadcasting for our benefit. They are hoping to either detect messages intended for something else or signals that are naturally generated by technology.

I get annoyed when the aliens angle is immediately dismissed in favor of equally outlandish natural explanations simply because they are goal seeked to fit the data.

Its not a real annoyance, Id just like to hear more serious thought given to aliens when it makes sense, because its fun.

Great. Our first contact will be an AI Chatbot watching an alien version of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"

Imagine our homemade AI plotting with a Hyper AI Civilization far away