FORGET little green men, SETI 鈥� the search for extraterrestrial intelligence 鈥� should seek signals from sentient machines, says Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.
He argues that intelligent aliens would probably develop artificial intelligence (AI). These sentient machines will be more prolific and longer-lived than their biological creators and so easier to detect. 鈥淭he aliens 鈥� at least, any we hear 鈥� will be machines,鈥� he writes in Acta Astronautica ().
鈥淧rolific and longer-lived than their biological creators, the aliens we hear will be machines鈥�
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Instead of focusing on habitable worlds, SETI should look for places that artificial intelligences are likely to haunt, Shostak adds.
鈥淧rovided they don鈥檛 destroy themselves and don鈥檛 hide, and communicate with long-range, comprehensible signals, they are the likely ones we will observe,鈥� agrees AI researcher Marcus Hutter of the Australian National University in Canberra.