{"id":56864,"date":"2017-04-26T20:24:22","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T03:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/why-havent-we-met-aliens-yet-because-theyve-evolved-into-ai"},"modified":"2017-04-26T20:24:22","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T03:24:22","slug":"why-havent-we-met-aliens-yet-because-theyve-evolved-into-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/why-havent-we-met-aliens-yet-because-theyve-evolved-into-ai","title":{"rendered":"Why Haven\u2019t We Met Aliens Yet? Because They\u2019ve Evolved into AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/why-havent-we-met-aliens-yet-because-theyve-evolved-into-ai.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Happy #Alien Day. Here\u2019s my trilogy of alien stories for Vice. I\u2019ll start by listing #2 first for those who only have time for one, but they do go in chronological order: 2) <a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/why-havent-we-met-aliens-yet-because-theyve-evolved-into-ai\">https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/why-havent-we-met\u2026ed-into-ai<\/a> &amp; 1) <a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/the-internet-will-become-self-aware-when-aliens-wake-it-up\">https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/the-internet-will\u2026wake-it-up<\/a> &amp; 3) (covered recently by the History Channel): <a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/the-language-of-aliens-will-always-be-indecipherable\">https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/the-language-of-a\u2026cipherable<\/a> #transhumanism<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>While traveling in Western Samoa many years ago, I met a young Harvard University graduate student researching ants. He invited me on a hike into the jungles to assist with his search for the tiny insect. He told me his goal was to discover a new species of ant, in hopes it might be named after him one day.<\/p>\n<p>Whenever I look up at the stars at night pondering the cosmos, I think of my ant collector friend, kneeling in the jungle with a magnifying glass, scouring the earth. I think of him, because I believe in aliens\u2014and I\u2019ve often wondered if aliens are doing the same to us.<\/p>\n<p>Believing in aliens\u2014or insanely smart artificial intelligences existing in the universe\u2014has become very fashionable in the last 10 years. And discussing its central dilemma: the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fermi_paradox\" target=\"_blank\">Fermi paradox<\/a>, has become even more so. The Fermi paradox states that the universe is very big\u2014with maybe a trillion galaxies that might contain 500 billion stars and planets <i>each <\/i>\u2014and out of that insanely large number, it would only take a tiny fraction of them to have habitable planets capable of bringing forth life.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever you think, the numbers point to the insane fact that aliens don\u2019t just exist, but probably billions of species of aliens exist. And the Fermi paradox asks: With so many alien civilizations out there, why haven\u2019t we found them? Or why haven\u2019t they found us?<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/why-havent-we-met-aliens-yet-because-theyve-evolved-into-ai\">https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/why-havent-we-met...ed-into-ai<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy #Alien Day. Here\u2019s my trilogy of alien stories for Vice. I\u2019ll start by listing #2 first for those who only have time for one, but they do go in chronological order: 2) https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/why-havent-we-met\u2026ed-into-ai &amp; 1) https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/the-internet-will\u2026wake-it-up &amp; 3) (covered recently by the History Channel): https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/the-language-of-a\u2026cipherable #transhumanism While traveling in Western Samoa many years ago, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":267,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,12,6,1501],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-existential-risks","category-robotics-ai","category-transhumanism-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}