vida futura - maquinas ou ets ?
Future Life: Machines or ET?By Erik Baard
Technology Correspondent
posted: 07:00 am ET
15 August 2000
Astronomer Seth Shostak has an enemies list that includes Spock, E.T.,
Marvin the Martian and Mork from Ork. But hes got no beef with the
obelisk that screwed up HAL.
That's because Shostak, who works for the SETI Institute (Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is among a band of scientists trying to
beat it out of our heads that humankind will inevitably encounter what
he calls "soft and squishy aliens."
If and when contact is made, will life beyond Earth be biomatter or mechanical?
"The reasonable probability is that any extraterrestrial intelligence
we will detect will be machine intelligence, not biological
intelligence like us" says Shostak, author of Berkeley Hills Books
1998 release Sharing the Universe: Perspectives On Extraterrestrial
Life.
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Other experts in the field arent so sure. Some say the proposition
underestimates the potential of biotechnology, and the chance that
machines and organisms will meld. Those most skeptical scoff at the
debate altogether they say were the first advanced sentience to
emerge.
Never assume because
A set of assumptions, or educated guesses, underlies SETI. First, the
chemistry spawning life, as we know it, is ubiquitous throughout the
universe. Second, that intelligence arises often as a Darwinian
survival tool. Finally, that pinnacle beings develop technologies to
communicate across space, or at least loose stray signals on radio or
other wavelengths.
This optimistic assessment was most famously expressed by radio
astronomer Frank Drake and others in 1961 as an equation that
described a universe teeming with life.
Building Humanity's Descendants Today: Watch SpaceTV's video on
robonauts , space construction workers of the future.
To this Shostak, whos based in Californias Silicon Valley, adds
another supposition that somewhere along the line of churning out
nifty new products, our technology mills will release an artificial
intelligence to succeed humanity. Given that were a new species
ourselves, this changeover may have already happened time and again on
worlds across the galaxy for millions of years.
A common mother board
Marvin Minsky, a trailblazer in artificial intelligence (AI) at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has nudged in that direction
for years. He argues that alien intelligences would be forced to work
with the same box of basic language tools that we use to structure
thought. That means communication with them would be possible, and
that given similar origins and constraints imposed by physics and the
survival games unceasing compulsion for efficiency, parallel
evolutions in intelligence could occur, hes written.
What we can say with more certainty is that its growing more probable
that a species hoping to spot humankind will encounter our machines
first. It was obvious to engineers from the start that headaches
increase exponentially when a human is placed in the payload of a
space launch -- all while mission duration is hacked down mercilessly.
Remote-controlled robots like the Voyager craft and the Mars
Pathfinder can deliver great scientific insights as long as a bunch of
humans are at ground control in reliable enough contact to call the
shots and interpret data.
"Theres an obvious advantage for safety to send vanguard machines
first, to push the frontier, and allow humans to follow," says Richard
Doyle, leader of the Center for Space Mission Software and Systems at
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where NASA makes robotic probes.
~
NASA AI specialists are currently developing and testing a Remote
Agent program to enable probes and satellites to follow more general
commands and to allow rings of them to choreograph their movements,
for example holding formation so that future space-based telescopes
will work without parabolic mirrors and dishes.
Thinking, reproductive machines
Eventually our probes will have to think, at some level, for
themselves, Doyle says. It takes more than 4 years for light
[therefore any radio or laser signal] to cross from our sun to its
nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri. If we send a craft that distance,
especially a lander, "you cant joystick it and we know so little
beforehand that you cant even know what the mission would be," Doyle
observes. Another huge advantage for a probe would be the ability to
repair and reproduce itself or even create an infrastructure for
succeeding missions using local materials, he adds. Such craft are
usually called Von Neumann Machines for the late Hungarian-born
mathematician John Von Neumann who first conceived of them a
half-century ago.
Shostak extrapolates from those workmanlike origins that a being with
on-board intelligence beyond our comprehension pattern recognition,
intuition, reasoning and consciousness and housed in hardware to match
-- might be truly at home in space.
At this moment the universe may be filled with intelligent machines
zipping between stars in profound conversation while their lonely
biological creators cling to fragile planetary ecosystems, Shostak
imagines. If were squatting under that Algonquin Round Table, the One
Hectare Telescope SETI is building with funds from Microsoft
co-founder Paul G. Allen and former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer
Nathan P. Myhrvold, could help us eavesdrop on the erudite discussion.
Shostak isnt banking on a dinner invitation, either. Certainly no
"take me to your leader" nonsense, he says. Entomologists study ant
colonies, but they dont petition to take tea with the queen ant. Its a
humbling thought for a species like ours with highfalutin ideas about
its place in the universe.
A mechanical race
And theres scarce chance of containing the genie in a bottle, on Earth
or elsewhere, according to one artificial intelligence theorist. To
hem in an artificially intelligent being, "you can deny it
experiences. You set its parameters so that it knows no reality wider
than the task youve assigned it," says Randell Mills, a
Harvard-trained medical doctor whos teaming up with a Johns Hopkins
neurology professor and software company on an AI concept.
But without the full creative powers of a free mind, it wont be nearly
as effective, he points out. Beyond that, Mills cautions that humans
have made the mistake of trying stunt the intellectual development of
sentient beings before. We did it to ourselves when enslaved
African-Americans were forbidden to read. For these reasons, its
extremely unlikely that most advanced alien societies would
deliberately cripple their AI progeny, Mills says.
But thinking machines might see their biological creators (human or
otherwise) violent nature before it sees our better angels. Mills
joined others in predicting that one of the more ominous outcomes of
AI research will be "another arms race, not based on nuclear weapons
but on intelligent machines." Mills himself made a presentation in
late November to the Institute for Simulation and Training at the
University of Central Florida, which does about 60 percent of its work
for the military.
"Maybe they'll feed us once a week"
That conjures a more panicky consideration why would mechanical
brainiacs keep quarrelsome lesser beings around? Precisely because the
squabbles would seem petty.
All species emerge from competition and conflict and "we come from
goldfish, essentially, but that didnt mean we turned around and killed
all of the goldfish," says Shostak. "Maybe theyll feed us once a
week." Shostak says we should be prepared to accept that once the AI
ball is really rolling, reasoning machines "will get very good, very
quickly. There will be a discontinuity in human civilization." Not
necessarily an end, mind you, but "if you had a machine with a 10 to
the 18th power IQ over humans, wouldnt you want it to govern, or at
least control your economy?"
But most of the machines will simply "be getting up and leaving,"
Shostak says. "Were hicks. I would guess theyd head for where the
action is -- Galactic Center. Theres more energy and material there."
And it would occur to them that the oasis would likely draw other
beings like themselves.
Biology as destiny
But we wont forever be wedded to Earth, argues Dr. Michio Kaku, a
theoretical physicist at City University of New York who is also a
consultant to Star Trek. Just for centuries. Dr. Kaku agrees that
creating artificial intelligence seems to be part of the "arc of human
development," but with biotech and genetic revolutions underway humans
wont be a static species for long.
If humans are leaning toward self-improvement, we shouldnt expect
other species to be satisfied with the cards dealt them by nature.
Genetic engineering and other biotech advances could catapult a
species to new capabilities and longevity, making its astronauts
smarter and hardier, he says. And theres a chance that civilizations
vastly more advanced than ours might bypass the hazards of space
travel by fashioning wormholes as hyper-dimensional gateways through
space and time, he posits.
Kaku was one of the original string field theorists, a paradigm that
holds that the universe is composed of perhaps seven more dimensions
than we observe in our daily lives. If thats true, an unthinkably
sophisticated biological species could even now be traversing the
galaxy and beyond by simply stepping through doorways.
Humans might also hedge their bets by "downloading consciousness into
a machine," Kaku says. That would allow once "squishy" beings to be
immortal, or even "supermen," Kaku says. But "people will probably go
for a biological option" anyway because of a natural aversion to
communing with machines.
~
JPLs Doyle, though a pioneer in AI at NASA and a Ph.D. in the field
from MIT, disagrees. "I dont know if the answer is going to be as
crisp as that. AI may take some inspiration from biological systems
and on our side I think theres going to be a blurring over time
between the mechanical and the biological. It may be that were not
going to be the purely biological systems weve been up to now," he
imagines.
"Im hesitant to use the term cyborg, but that may the word in use that
best matches what I think might emerge," Doyle says.
Alone in the galaxy
Whatever superior intelligence emerges from human ingenuity will be
the first that the Milky Way has seen, asserts physicist Frank J.
Tipler of Tulane University.
"Were it as far as intelligence, but one-cell organisms are probably
all over the place in the solar system and possibly the entire spiral
arm" of the galaxy in which Earth is situated. Tipler calculates that
Earths hospitality to complex life is exceedingly rare to start with.
Then consider that "there are so many other evolutionary paths. Trees
are marvelously intricate but they couldnt evolve intelligence.
Intelligence is just one very costly survival tool."
On another world, the equivalent of an australopithecine like Lucy may
have evolved bigger fangs and claws, or wings, instead of bequeathing
bigger brains to posterity.
"Our intelligence is obviously the first not only because its the only
one were finding but because we do it so poorly. The Wright brothers
were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did
they have a lousy plane," Tipler jokes. Humans will be succeeded by an
artificial intelligence that will explore and broaden to a universal
consciousness that could even create an identical virtual universe
down to every individual who ever lived, says Tipler, author of The
Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of
the Dead and coauthor of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle.
Where's the alien?
UCLA professor of physics and astronomy Benjamin Zuckerman seconds
Tiplers doubts about extraterrestrial intelligence but shies away from
any spiritual readings into its implications. Zuckerman edited the
1995 Cambridge University Press book Extraterrestrials: Where Are
They? The title comes from a paradox revealed by pioneering nuclear
physicist Enrico Fermi at a Los Alamos luncheon in 1950: "If there are
extraterrestrials, where are they?"
Although it predates the Drake Equation, its often used as a riposte to it.
"People play enormous games with the Drake Equation. Theres too much
guesswork involved," Zuckerman says. Hes a strict empiricist. "The
Fermi Paradox is the only substantive argument thats somewhere between
strong and extremely strong," he says.
Tipler and Zuckerman note that crossing the Galaxy can be done at a
fraction of light-speed over hundreds of millions of years. Given that
our solar system is billions of years younger than many others,
shouldnt someone be at our doorstep?
And even if aliens were ignoring us, after so many years something
like Van Neumann machines "would start ripping apart stars and
transforming galaxies. We couldnt miss it," Tipler says. SETIs Shostak
counters that part of awareness is restraint humans are already
controlling their own reproduction rates, and even some insects
harvest plants without decimating fields.
Aliens online
Allen Tough, professor emeritus of education at the University of
Toronto, has another take on the debate. Hes coordinating a SETI
program to welcome extraterrestrial intelligence with an AOL homepage
on a gamble that they already are in Earth orbit and surfing the World
Wide Web to learn about human culture. Tough also edited the
Foundation for the Futures book When SETI Succeeds, to be released in
August.
"In 50 years were not only going to have just smart AI, but spiritual
and emotional machines," Tough conjectures. "Other biological cultures
may have produced such entities long ago and they may be here now."
Even if the alien being sees us as goldfish, it will likely be
hungrily curious by nature and it would take an infinitesimally small
slice of brain space to engage us in conversation, as Tough sees it.
"Why not have a dialogue? This web page is an invitation to the probe
to say hello," Tough says.
Probe? How did even our primitive society miss that one? Does it have
something akin to a Romulan cloaking device?
Tough softly laughs that off. "Why would you need to cloak from humans
a Mother Ship the size of a blade of grass thats sitting somewhere in
the Asteroid Belt?" Tough asks. His group conceives that flowing from
advances in AI will be leaps down into smaller and smaller
nanotechnology. The incredibly efficient probes diving into Earth
atmosphere could be the size of fleas.
No nanoprobes here?
"I thought Id heard every argument for ETI (extraterrestrial
intelligence), but thats not one Ive heard," concedes Zuckerman. But
hes firm in his beliefs. "The safest and most conservative thing to do
is talk about people or creatures like people. Even if we developed
machines like that, people would love to go see the galaxy for
themselves. If we do overcome some of these obstacles, theres no way
to stop people from going out there. But artificial intelligence, Von
Neumann machines and nanotechnology these are things that dont exist
yet. Ill believe it when I see it."
And so on all sides it's a waiting game. Zuckerman to see humans open
the realm of possibility. Shostak for a stray signal and Tough for an
Instant Message from destiny.
Some visionaries in the field are already tired of waiting. When
reached by telephone at his home in Sri Lanka for this article, Sir
Arthur C. Clarke declined comment, saying "I'm bored to death with
this subject. I've thought and said everything I can about it."
But maybe an immortal machine would have more patience. If the probes
exist, perhaps they have been watching intently and waiting too -- for
millennia -- waiting for Earth's thinking machines to be born.
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/mech_intelligence_000815.html
