This is a truly fresh idea that reframes my entire outlook on the distant
future:
genius.it/nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/why-alien-life-will-be-robotic?utm_source=frontpage&utm_medium=mview&utm_campaign=why-alien-life-will-be-robotic
See my annotations on that story via Genius.
But the gist is:
– earthly intelligence developed pretty fast (millions of years)
– from becoming really intelligent (tools) it reached super-intelligence
(artificial intelligence) in only 3,000 years
– so any life likely to be exploring space is likely also to have surpassed
the AI stage
– and like us, it has been taken over by its robots by now
So if you meet an alien, it’s likely to be a robot.
Here’s another question: if you were a super intelligent hive-mind robot
with galaxy-spanning sensor systems and telecommunication, why would you
bother visiting anywhere? You know everything, have everything you need,
and have no “but the oxygen is running out” worries.