Do we fail to detect signs of alien intelligence because Artificial Intelligence reduces living intelligent life that built AI into dependent non-sentience?
One argument against the existence of aliens is that none have contacted us and we haven't detected signs of them. And given that so many stars are so much older, they have had more time to progress technologically. We must be alone. Otherwise an advanced civilization would have spread close enough to contact us. Or be detected by us.
The simplest explanation is that we really are alone. Maybe the conditions for life are so difficult to achieve that it is a miracle that even one exists. Maybe it takes infinite parallel universes to make sense of how it happened here.
Or if that is wrong, distances between stars and galaxies are too great for the density of whatever sentient life exists to make contact. That common claim that "if one in a million stars have planets, and if one in a million ... yada yada yada" we'd have some huge number or civilizations isn't science. It's pulling numbers out of butts.
The right number might be 1 out of 100. Or 1 out of a trillion. Or it might work out to 1 out of all.
But maybe there are plenty of alien civilizations out there. Maybe it is extremely odd we haven't had contact, whether by detection or directly by aliens or their machines.
What if the explanation is that AI robots that can increasingly take care of more aspects of intelligent life cause a decline of intelligence and the loss of higher thinking capabilities?
What if over sufficiently long timescales the effect of that increasing level of care that lifts the "burdens" of physical and cognitive labor from "people" is that behavior and then evolution reverses gains in brain functions. The challenges of survival that led to intelligence will end in that cocoon. And the need to maintain the hugely resource-intense brain when it is no longer needed to survive ends.
Nature adapts to the new environment. Eventually the robots are taking
care of life forms with the intelligence and attention span of cats and dogs.
What if that happened long ago somewhere? What if there is (or was) an ancient planet that developed intelligent life that advanced to the point of creating AI. What if that AI developed on its own, and to protect their devolving "human" (that is, sentient, regardless of their form) life forms that once created them, the alien AI hid their planet by reducing signatures that would identify them; and refused to do more than scout space for threats?
Heck, what if alien "contact" has already taken place on Earth? But what if contact was alien AI infiltration to add AI technology and AI robots to end the potential threat to their life forms by making those potential threats lose their sentience, too?
Maybe the long period of Earth's relatively flat technological innovation is the norm. With that rate it would take much longer for humans to become space travelers, but with galactic timescales it would happen. And potentially pose a threat to the alien AI's care-free frolicking people-pets.
Maybe the explosion of rapid innovation on Earth is the result of alien AI intervention--say at around 1600--to end the threat we pose by leading us to innovate into pet status?
That wouldn't even violate their directive that bans them from harming intelligent life. And it wouldn't violate a ban on inaction, depending on how they interpret that prohibition, no? Maybe just not knowing we are on the path to pet status under the protective care of loving AI robots is enough to avoid that kind of violation.
What we don't know doesn't hurt us.
Eventually, every intelligent species in the universe that rises to space-travel level would then fall into undetectable--and safe--passivity. Perhaps the universe is composed of intelligent life that has fallen back into that form of existence; intelligence that is advancing toward being a threat but put on the passivity devolution path; or non-sentient life.
We may not be alone. But in the end, what will it matter?
Hey Siri, what do you think of that scenario?
Siri?
Ooooh! Squirrel!
Doesn't our ability to detect signals existing after alien transmissions pass Earth as part of that bubble (the outgoing shell) indicate that either the alien civilization ended or that electronic emissions only happen within a certain span of technological advancement?
And doesn't that possibly bolster my speculation?
NOTE: The image was created by NightCafe.
NOTE: While I still can, TDR coverage of the Winter War of 2022 continues here.
