11 November 2023 , 09:11
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Humans have already found aliens, but they aren't the little green creatures we feared, an expert has said.
Lord Martin Rees, UK's Astronomer Royal, has said Artificial Intelligence is a form of alien life - and that it signals humans reaching the peak of Darwinian evolution. He also warns that we are "one or two more centuries" away from being taken over by the AI "aliens".
Lord Rees' cautious comments come as Rishi Sunak said that Britain’s summit on artificial intelligence would “tip the balance in favour of humanity”.
The multi-millionaire Prime Minister hailed Musk the multi-billionaire owner of Twitter/X for his contribution to the technological revolution. Speaking at a press conference after the UK’s AI Safety Summit Mr Sunak outlined why he wanted to hear from Musk – also founder of OpenAI, which developed the ChatGPT system.
He said: “As one of the leading actors in AI, it’s important that he was engaged in this summit and I’m delighted that he was attending. It was around a decade ago that he started talking about some of the risks that AI could pose and the importance of governments and others doing what is necessary to mitigate against those.”
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However, Lord Rees has a different analysis. In the BBC, he wrote: “It may be only one or two more centuries before humans are overtaken or transcended by inorganic intelligence. If this had happened, our species would have been just a brief interlude in Earth's history before the machines take over. Many assume that human beings are at the peak of intelligence, but it's possible that our species may represent a stage on the path toward minds that are more artificial.
“This could explain why the cosmos seems so empty of life like us. If an evolutionary transition to non-organic intelligence is inevitable across the Universe, our telescopes would be most unlikely to catch human-like intelligence in the sliver of time when it was still embodied in that form. It is perhaps more likely that the aliens would be the remote electronic progeny of other organic creatures that existed long ago.”
Lord Rees has also claimed that AI "aliens" are not likely to be aggressive, if "Darwinian pressures" do not apply to them. He added they may "just want to think deep thoughts".