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Archive for the ‘existential risks’ category: Page 44

Aug 11, 2022

We Might Already Speak the Same Language As ET

Posted by in categories: alien life, existential risks, mathematics, quantum physics

Alien communication could utilize quantum physics, so SETI needs a new way to listen.


The Fermi paradox, the “where is everybody?” puzzle, is a persistent question in the search for life in the universe. It asks why, if life is not exceedingly rare in the cosmos, it hasn’t shown up on our doorstep. Equally we might ask why we haven’t even heard from alien life, through radio signals or any other means. A part of the answer could be that our present work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is actually very limited. Estimates show that we’ve only examined the equivalent of a hot tub of water compared to all the world’s oceans in our combing through the electromagnetic information that rolls in from the cosmos.1

If you’re a glass-half-full kind of person you’ll see this as an opportunity, but the problem is that we don’t actually know what might be filling the glass in the first place. The vast majority of SETI studies look for structure in electromagnetic radiation, whether in amplitude or frequency modulations of radio waves, or regularity in pulses of light, or in multi-wavelength correlations. In other words, we assume that information might be sailing past us in representations built using classical physics. But what if that’s just wrong?

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Aug 8, 2022

Are We Ready for the Next Big Solar Storm?

Posted by in categories: energy, existential risks, satellites

The biggest geomagnetic storm in recorded history happened more than 150 years ago. Now, we’re entering yet another period of solar maximum.


It was just another September night in 1,859 when Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson witnessed a remarkable event. The British astronomers weren’t together, but both happened to be peering at the Sun through telescopes at the precise moment that a massive ejection spewed from the fiery star. Within a few days, others on Earth noticed colorful aurora streaking across the skies and telegraph lines — the advanced technology of the day in Europe and North America — erupting in sparks.

The solar flare came to be known as the Carrington Event, named after one of the two astronomers who first described it. Despite occurring more than 150 years ago, it still stands as the strongest known geomagnetic storm (though we lack measurements to say precisely how big it was).

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Aug 5, 2022

Saving the world one algorithm at a time | The Age of A.I.

Posted by in categories: education, existential risks, food, information science, robotics/AI

Many say that human beings have destroyed our planet. Because of this these people are endeavoring to save it through the help of artificial intelligence. Famine, animal extinction, and war may all be preventable one day with the help of technology.

The Age of A.I. is a 8 part documentary series hosted by Robert Downey Jr. covering the ways Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Neural Networks will change the world.

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Aug 3, 2022

The Fermi Paradox Revisited and Resolved?

Posted by in categories: alien life, existential risks, physics

In February 2020, four distinguished astrophysicists — Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback, Adam Frank, Jason Wright, Caleb Scharf suggested that Earth may have remained unvisited by space-faring civilizations all the while existing in a galaxy of interstellar civilizations seeded by moving stars that spread alien life, offering a solution to the perplexing Fermi paradox. They concluded that a planet-hopping civilization could populate the Milky Way in as little as 650,000 years.

“It’s possible that the Milky Way is partially settled, or intermittently so; maybe explorers visited us in the past, but we don’t remember, and they died out,” says Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback, an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his collaborators in a 2019 study that suggests it wouldn’t take as long as thought for a space-faring civilization to planet-hop across the galaxy, because the orbits of stars can help distribute life, offering a new solution to the Fermi paradox. “The solar system may well be amid other settled systems; it’s just been unvisited for millions of years.”

Aug 3, 2022

Where are the aliens? A new study may finally solve the Fermi Paradox

Posted by in categories: alien life, existential risks

A new study proposes a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox, suggesting why we may not detect advanced alien civilizations.

A new study offers a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox. * The Fermi Paradox wonders why we haven’t encountered aliens yet. * Advanced alien civilizations may be pulling back from space exploration to avoid collapse, predict the researchers.

With the sheer vastness of space, it seems quite conceivable that there should be more intelligent civilizations out there besides us. After all, some estimates peg the observable universe to contain at least 2 trillion galaxies, with each such galaxy having approximately 100 million stars on average but with some like our Milky Way Galaxy estimated as having as many as 200 billion stars and 100 billion planets. We are talking astonishing numbers in quintillions or sextillions for the total number of planets in the universe. new study by Dr. Michael Wong of the Carnegie Institution for Science and Caltech’s Dr. Stuart Bartlett proposes a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox.

Aug 1, 2022

OpenAI’s DALL-E 2: A dream tool and existential threat to visual artists

Posted by in categories: existential risks, information science, robotics/AI

The greatest artistic tool ever built, or a harbinger of doom for entire creative industries? OpenAI’s second-generation DALL-E 2 system is slowly opening up to the public, and its text-based image generation and editing abilities are awe-inspiring.

The pace of progress in the field of AI-powered text-to-image generation is positively frightening. The generative adversarial network, or GAN, first emerged in 2014, putting forth the idea of two AIs in competition with one another, both “trained” by being shown a huge number of real images, labeled to help the algorithms learn what they’re looking at. A “generator” AI then starts to create images, and a “discriminator” AI tries to guess if they’re real images or AI creations.

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Jul 31, 2022

NOVA l PBS

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

Can we deflect an asteroid if it were to hit Earth? Scientists launched a mission to test it out:

Jul 30, 2022

2019 Recap: “Vernor Vinge on the Singularity”— (2 decades ago)

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, ethics, existential risks, robotics/AI, singularity

By Natasha Vita-More.

Has the technological singularity in 2019 changed since the late 1990s?

As a theoretical concept it has become more recognized. As a potential threat, it is significantly written about and talked about. Because the field of narrow AI is growing and machine learning has found a place in academics and entrepreneurs are investing in the growth of AI, tech leaders have come to the table and voiced their concerns, especially Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and the late Stephen Hawking. The concept of existential risk has taken a central position within the discussions about AI and machine ethicists are prepping their arguments toward a consensus that near-future robots will force us to rethink the exponential advances in the fields of robotics and computer science. Here it is crucial for those leaders in philosophy and ethics to address the concept of what an ethical machine means and the true goal of machine ethics.

Jul 29, 2022

Elon Musk — People Will Understand — Finally It’s Happening!

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, existential risks, information science

Explains why we can meet aliens soon. He is on to something. Elon Musk disagrees with the research that argues that there are not aliens,. Elon Musk explains why drake equation is important and why Fermi paradox is wrong.

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Jul 28, 2022

A.I. Wars, The Fermi Paradox and Great Filters with David Brin

Posted by in categories: alien life, existential risks, nanotechnology, physics, robotics/AI, security

Why we need AI to compete against each other. Does a Great Filter Stop all Alien Civilizations at some point? Are we Doomed if We Find Life in Our Solar System?

David Brin is a scientist, speaker, technical consultant and world-known author. His novels have been New York Times Bestsellers, winning multiple Hugo, Nebula and other awards.
A 1998 movie, directed by Kevin Costner, was loosely based on his book The Postman.
His Ph.D in Physics from UCSD — followed a masters in optics and an undergraduate degree in astrophysics from Caltech. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Space Institute and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Brin serves on advisory committees dealing with subjects as diverse as national defense and homeland security, astronomy and space exploration, SETI and nanotechnology, future/prediction and philanthropy. He has served since 2010 on the council of external advisers for NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts group (NIAC), which supports the most inventive and potentially ground-breaking new endeavors.

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