Thursday, March 10, 2011

Scientists, AI, And Interstellar Travel

It's become something of an article of faith among scientists who think about such things that intelligent machines, not biological life, will travel among the stars. They argue life like humans is simply not up to such journeys, whereas sufficiently advanced machines could deal with both the conditions in deep space and those on a new world.

There are many counters to the basic thrust of their position, but let's focus on a factor physicists should know something about-- time. Humans today are ill-suited for interstellar travel, but we're not undertaking it. Evolution works over time. In the future, any humans in position to go to the stars will be members of an incredibly rich civilization that dominates the Solar System. Economic and other factors will have led to the construction of increasingly sophisticated space settlements and. over generations, cultures and societies will have evolved to embrace life in those places-- which will be nothing like living in tin cans.

There's also the argument that intelligent machines will supplant humans as the dominant force on Earth-- perhaps quite soon. In fact, artificial intelligence is still in its infancy, and still under human control. Its development could still go any number of ways, and it's not clear that advanced AI would seek to control humans. Human urges have evolved from human experience. Will a machine that was nowhere in its history hunted by sabre-toothed cats have the urge to control its environment? Will a machine that never had to struggle for survival know from competition or ambition, fear or ruthlessness?

Perhaps the answers to those questions will be clear at some point, but no one knows them yet.

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