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Article about the type of intelligence a first contact would reveal
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HAL Send message Joined: 18 May 99 Posts: 535 Credit: 8,246,955 RAC: 3 |
The article argues that the first contact would be an AI yes, but a savant AI - "If we do meet an AI in our cosmological jaunt, it probably won’t be conscious in the full sense of the word. In fact, I think we’d find ourselves facing something akin to a ‘savant’ intelligence – a whiz at specific tasks, but otherwise extremely limited in its capacities (Scharf 2018)." I'm putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all, I think, that any conscious entity can ever hope to do. |
betreger Send message Joined: 29 Jun 99 Posts: 11360 Credit: 29,581,041 RAC: 66 |
Good read |
Mr. Kevvy Send message Joined: 15 May 99 Posts: 3776 Credit: 1,114,826,392 RAC: 3,319 |
Both of my favourite and arguably two of the best-known and most influential sci-fi works regarding ETI discoveries (2001 and Contact) also anticipated this. In both, no actual alien intelligence is communicated with. Instead the interaction is completely with alien beacons, machine intelligences which not only communicate but also orchestrate the events of the stories. |
Sirius B Send message Joined: 26 Dec 00 Posts: 24877 Credit: 3,081,182 RAC: 7 |
+1 I find this: One possibility is that this machine is super-capable, exceeding our human capacity for cognitive or analytical tasks. Such an AI might be exceedingly hard to understand, either in terms of its underlying motivation or because of practical barriers of communication bandwidth. For this device, talking to us might be like talking to an infant. Or trying to discuss the collected works of Shakespeare using pictographs. An alien system optimised for processing vast data streams might not even be able to downgrade its pace enough to notice that we’re trying to talk, whether we use technology or not.Dovetails nicely with what Gordon said. We also need to think outside the box as well as what we know currently. |
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