[tt] NS: Don't expect ET to look like us

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Don't expect ET to look like us
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19826585.300&print=true

28 May 2008
Steven J. Dick

WE HAVE been hunting for intelligent life in the universe since
Frank Drake inaugurated the first modern radio search in 1960. So
far, no interstellar communications have been detected, but I have
always agreed with the final sentence in Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip
Morrison's famous Nature paper of the year before: "The probability
of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search, the
chance of success is zero."

I am a fan of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI),
and I served as the official SETI historian before Congress
cancelled NASA's programme in 1993. I disagree with those who say
that after almost 50 years we have searched long enough. The truth
is, we have searched only the tiniest part of our own galaxy in only
a limited frequency range. More to the point: we may have been
looking for the wrong thing.

SETI scientists are not known for a lack of imagination, but even
they may not be thinking big enough. They consistently acknowledge
that alien intelligence would likely be older and more advanced than
our own, a belief borne out by what we know about the universe. Yet
they have done nothing to incorporate this into their search.
Instead, they continue to look for biological creatures similar to
us - ignoring the likelihood that any intelligence in the universe
has evolved beyond biology.

It is, of course, impossible to know what advanced ETs might be
like, but we can make some educated guesses. Cosmic evolution has
three components: astronomical, biological and cultural. While SETI
scientists readily recognise the first two, by training and
inclination they ignore the third. That's a problem, because the one
thing we know for sure is that civilisations older than ours will
have undergone cultural evolution. And as we know from our
experience on Earth, the pace of cultural evolution leaves other
forms of evolution for dust.

The study of terrestrial cultural evolution has made great progress
in the last few decades, but it has been controversial - think E. O.
Wilson's sociobiology, Richard Dawkins's memes, Daniel Dennett's
universal Darwinism, and theories of gene-culture co-evolution - and
we still don't have a robust theory. There is no doubt, though, that
wherever intelligence exists, cultural evolution takes place.

So I propose what I call the "intelligence principle": that the
maintenance, improvement and perpetuation of knowledge and
intelligence is the central driving force of cultural evolution, and
that to the extent that intelligence can be improved, it will be
improved. Applied to life in the universe, this means that ETs will
have sought the best ways to improve their intelligence, and in
doing so may long ago have advanced beyond flesh and blood to
artificial intelligence (AI). Futurists such as Hans Moravec and Ray
Kurzweil have predicted that a similar transition from biological
life to AI will happen here on Earth in only a few generations.

Given these considerations, it seems inevitable that we live in a
post-biological universe, and that SETI may not make sense unless we
find ways to take cultural evolution seriously. The potential impact
on their search is huge. Environmental tolerance and ability to use
and create resources beyond the planetary realm means that SETI
searches need not be confined to Earth-like planets, or even to
planets at all. The intelligence principle renders it unlikely that
post-biologicals would wish to communicate with embryonic
biologicals such as humans, so we might be reduced to intercepting
their communications. The vast disparity in age between biologicals
and post-biologicals highlights what has been called the
incommensurability problem: the differences between our minds and
theirs may be so great that communication is impossible.

Admittedly, there are many objections to the post-biological
universe scenario. It assumes that intelligence is the central
driving force of cultural evolution. It assumes that strong AI is
possible. It assumes that there will be long-term progress in
cultural evolution. And it assumes that post-biologicals are
themselves not subject to cultural evolution. But the chief weakness
of the idea may be that it is not bold enough, perhaps too closely
tied to our current world view at the dawn of the computer age.

The argument for a post-biological universe is thus not made with
deductive rigour. Neither is the argument that ETs exist at all. But
given the existence of ETs, the possibility of a post-biological
universe requires serious study. It is an opportunity for AI
researchers to place their work in a cosmic context. AI and SETI,
after all, have a lot in common, starting with their interest in the
nature of intelligence - which is itself an important area of
research. Informed by AI and cultural evolution studies, SETI can
expand its possibilities in new directions, and in its turn, the
study of the long-term future of AI can become more than idle
speculation.

Astrobiology - Learn more in our out-of-this-world special report.

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Weblinks

SETI
http://www.seti.org/
Steven J. Dick: Why We Explore, NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/whyweexplore/SETI@home
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
NASA history division
http://history.nasa.gov/