Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Posts: 1663 Location: Cincinnati, OH
Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 12:33 pm Post subject: Could Robot Aliens Exist?
Copied from the Sept 2008 issue of Popular Science --
The existence of a race of sentient alien robots might be not just possible, but inevitable. In fact, we might be living in a "postbiological" universe right now, in which intelligent extraterrestrials somewhere have exchanged organic brains for artificial ones.
The driving factor is a pragmatic desire to improve mental capacity. Alien beings may have already reach a point in their evolution where, having exhausted the potential of their biological brains, they have taken the next logical step and opted for robotic brains equipped with artificial intelligence.
This brain swap may not be as far off for humans as one might think. In only a few decades, the computer revolution here on Earth has produced supercomputers capable of performing more than a quadrillion calculations per second. (According to research by Hans Moravec, an artificial intelligence expert at Carnegie Mellon University, that trumps the human brain's estimated top speed of 100 trillion calculations per second.) Some scientists speculate that in a few decades, an event called the technological singularity will occur, and machines armed with computer brains will become sentient and surpass human intelligence. Civilizations equipped with technology light-years ahead of our own could have already experienced the singularity thousands, or even millions of years ago.
How likely is it that such a robotic race exists? Given the limitations of biology as we know it, the force of cultural evolution, and the imperative to improve intelligence, I'd say the chances are greater than 50/50. That said, if postbiological beings do exist, they might not be interested in us at all. The gulf between their minds and ours might be so great that communication is impossible, or they might consider meatheads like us too primitive to warrant their attention.
Steven Dick, NASA Chief Historian (as told to Ker Than of Popular Science)
The idea of postbiological intelligence might explain some of the inherent weirdness that the UFO phenomenon has exhibited all this time. It doesn't make any sense to human simply because it is not even remotely akin to human intelligence.
I've mentioned on several occasions that the apparent interest in Earth has nothing to do with us but has everything to do with our machines. Perhaps a post-biological species is here to observe the birth of a new post-biological species here on Earth. We'll know soon enough. Several sources predict that the singularity will be reached before the year 2030.
S _________________ "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson
Joined: 14 Oct 2007 Posts: 373 Location: Brixham, Devon, England
Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 6:02 pm Post subject:
Hmmm, this is pure science fiction, but then again, Sci-Fi has a tendancy to prove itself right time after time. Sentient AI could well be possible, but the thought is also scary. Just like in the movies " Terminator ", or " 2001: A Space Odyssey ", AI's may consider us a threat to their survival, and work towards destroying us. We would have to make sure that there is a way to keep an eye on any free thinking computer in the future.
As for putting our minds into a robot, I would prefer to stay as I am. Imagine not being able to feel the sense of touch, or the sense of smell? Imagine never being able to make love, or just to hold someone in your arms? Imagine not being able to laugh, or cry? If this ever came to be in our lifetime, I would refuse the transfer. Yes, we would live much longer, if you could call it life, but we would lose so much. We would become automatons.
As for alien AI, I'd like to think that they would not even consider it too. That they would miss so much from their natural forms.
Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Posts: 1663 Location: Cincinnati, OH
Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:25 am Post subject:
I think the evolution could happen in two ways Hopo - either one of our machines reaches consciousness or we slowly begin to introduce computer enhancements to our brains - chips that would provide us with special knowledge or special skill - not unlike how they downloaded the martial arts skills into Neo's brain in The Matrix.
I think that the latter is more likely. More and more people will use the enhancements to allow them to compete for jobs , in school, in athletics, whatever. For all those who would opt not to participate, there will be plenty who will. Eventually, a gulf will develop between the enhanced and the non-enhanced and it will be interesting to see what happens. I could see that the enhanced humans will ultimately begin to think of their non-enhanced counterparts as being mentally deficient. It will lead to problems and challenges the likes of which we can now scarcely imagine. I don't think this is science fiction. I think we'll start seeing the beginnings of it within 10 years.
S _________________ "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson
Oh, I HOPE NOT! Humans have not proven themselves to be smart enough to avoid hatred and wars. It would be a disaster to have that mentality in a non-biological body.
I think the evolution could happen in two ways Hopo - either one of our machines reaches consciousness or we slowly begin to introduce computer enhancements to our brains - chips that would provide us with special knowledge or special skill - not unlike how they downloaded the martial arts skills into Neo's brain in The Matrix.
I think that the latter is more likely. More and more people will use the enhancements to allow them to compete for jobs , in school, in athletics, whatever. For all those who would opt not to participate, there will be plenty who will. Eventually, a gulf will develop between the enhanced and the non-enhanced and it will be interesting to see what happens. I could see that the enhanced humans will ultimately begin to think of their non-enhanced counterparts as being mentally deficient. It will lead to problems and challenges the likes of which we can now scarcely imagine. I don't think this is science fiction. I think we'll start seeing the beginnings of it within 10 years.
S
It depends on how you valuate what is called an enhancement...what you infer is that utility is the purpose of the mind as a mechanism oriented solely to tasking...well...there you have the Kingdom of The Ants, which we largely are heading toward, and so to enhance this, I suppose is inevitable. Of course we have viruses, Trojan Horses etc...one can imagine downloading one into one of these autonomic databases...as an act of counter insurgency...increasingly more complex lunacies....the issue with all this is that we do not have a rational model of consciousness and I suspect we never will. It is much more complex in many areas...dimensionality...metaphoric..etc...than a database can ever handle in terms of adaptation and uncertainty...to me AI is a metaphor...the ill fated quest to eliminate uncertainty...which ultimately...if successful.. would in effect bring evolution to a full stop...which for the larger part..it already has if you look at the common media or warfare...exploitation etc...would you want to control the weather to eliminate hurricanes?....all this ....its a cultural fantasy that has a price we cannot pay...look at the state of the environment...it may succeed but like all human endeavors it is largely incoherent in attempting to supercede both nature and do an end run around the problem of our existing database which is so fallible, it is an expensive joke...in terms of utility...let alone "improving" this situation...ugh...we do not know what we are and so anything we conceive of is partial...incomplete...and so when you tamper with it under these circumstances..it makes Frankenstein look like a Teletubbie. Remember the symbology of abductions...what is the term abduction mean...? is genetic experimentation an abduction of a certain kind? What is being abducted from what? Are abductions a form of message...a steering metaphor? The clinical environment....the assurances...the hybrid humans are a mirror cast upon us....If ET is robotic then it is saying...danger!...danger!...will robinson...that craazy Dr Smith is at it again..of course all this gives us a rationalization behind our own denials of responsibility.. blaming the robot ( technology) rather than ourselves..once again
Joined: 22 Jun 2007 Posts: 136 Location: Halifax, Nova Scotia
Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 11:27 am Post subject:
Not only is it possible that any alien spacecraft that made its way here would be "crewed" by AI, it's almost certain. After all, if you were living on Mars right now, the first Earth beings you would have run across would have been the robots we sent... and that's at our limited stage of development. Who knows what we'll look like in a decade or two or three, much less the hundreds or thousands of years from now when we may be able to travel to the stars. Given the technological development that this would require, concomitant technological change to the actual beings themselves would surely have occurred, whether it was in the form of changes to them so that they became "posthuman", or whether they were supplanted by their own creations, a la the Terminator scenario. Thus, when we ask ourselves how aliens might behave, we should assume that we are dealing with not biological beings that think the same way we do, but rather artificial life forms that are truly alien to us.
Androids or some other form of AI is certainly possible if one postulates an advanced race of beings.They might use such entities to explore space for them.
Nigel Kerner has a whole book (Song Of The Greys) about the greys being clones of an advanced race who sent the greys out to explore. Of course he gets into all manner of weird ideas beyond the simple exploration theme. _________________ "Some say the valley has always been haunted ever since River ran.
The rippling waters fast as the colors conceal the Green Man."
Roy Harpur from The Green Man
The evidence of operations on the moon, recorded by astronomers since the 17th century and kept in logs under
transient lunar phenomena (TLP) has long exhibited images of tractor like machines leaving tracks on the insdie of crater
walls and lights that appear and sometimes reappear.
More recently a list of highly evocative NASA photographs was complied as part of a book, We Discovered Alien Bases on the
Moon, by Fred Steckling. On the cover is the photo of one of Bergrun's EMVs above a prominant lunar crater.
The size of the object can be somewhat approximated by the known dimensions of the crater.
All things considered, it is no leap to attribute any culture with abilities that leap vastly beyond robotics, when they exhibit
such capabilities.
I would imagine them to have arrived at a level of bio-genetics where living tissue becomes as pliant to their purposes as
any circuitry or lever.
JCH _________________ The clues anomaly offer are the very hints towards the new discoveries of tomorrow, waiting for us today. While we set expectations on constructs we make of time, all these self- limitations can dissolve in the mind that grasps this one thing well.
Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Posts: 1663 Location: Cincinnati, OH
Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:32 pm Post subject:
JCH - your point is well taken that we can't limit our thinking to silicon and integrated circuits. Our own scientists are beginning to manipulate organic matter to create simple machines - it may be that post-biological may mean manufactured but not necessarily non-organic.
S _________________ "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson
Joined: 12 Aug 2008 Posts: 11 Location: Moon Base Delta
Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 7:20 am Post subject:
That's extremely thought provoking! Could you please provide a link to the original article? Thanks! And by the way, the date mentioned by you is Sept 2008. Is it actually Sept 2007?
Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Posts: 1663 Location: Cincinnati, OH
Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 9:11 am Post subject:
No - it is actually the September 2008 issue (the brand new one). Subscribers received it about a week ago. It's not on the newsstands and not on the popsci website yet either. I actually had to copy the text by hand!
BTW, welcome to Department 47 Scram!
S _________________ "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson
Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Posts: 1663 Location: Cincinnati, OH
Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 11:57 am Post subject:
Apparently, Stephen Dick has been talking about post-biological entities for quite a while. Here is a link to a position paper on the subject that Mr. Dick gave at a symposium in 2006:
Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Posts: 1663 Location: Cincinnati, OH
Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 3:08 pm Post subject:
I received several intriguing e-mails regarding this thread. One was from an abductee by the name of Barbara Wade. I cannot speak to Barbara's overall experience, but she seems serious and sincere. For that reason, I felt her thoughts regarding the use of artificial organic life were worth posting:
"I am an abductee and a "walk-in". That means I have the soul of an ET in a human body and the memories of having been that ET.
I remember what our ships were like, and the one that brought me here. It had a bio-mechanical "skin", a covering that spread over the whole outside of the ship. I saw the last part of the ship's construction. After the inside and frame was completed, a worker took a bio-mechanical jell about the size of the top of a TV tray, and put it onto the frame. It spread over the outside of the ship completely. It made a seamless cover.
The color was sort of iridescent black-navy blue."
I can see that this would be some handy-dandy stuff to have. If you had the technology, you could "program" the gel to take on various properties as needed - to repair itself, to absorb certain radiations, etc. Particularly interested concept - especially considering that Barbara's experiences date back to the 1950s.
S
Note that the quote from Barbara's e-mail was reproduced with her permission. _________________ "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson
The soul of an et in a human body....a walk in..? You must be kidding.
I don't believe any of these people who claim that they are alien or alien hybrids or reincarnated aliens.
Any more I doubt most claims of alien contact . Something might be contacting humans for centuries (the occult , paranormal, and religious literature is full of interesting 'contacts' over the centuries) but imho it's not space aliens here to visit or colonize earth. _________________ "Some say the valley has always been haunted ever since River ran.
The rippling waters fast as the colors conceal the Green Man."
Roy Harpur from The Green Man
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Could you please provide a link to the original article? Thanks! And by the way, the date mentioned by you is 
