Fermi’s Paradox: AI might well explain why.
A number of explanations for fermi's paradox have been advanced since it was proposed, or at least enhanced by physicists Enrico Fermi and Michael H. Hart in the 1950s 1 but none so far has proven to be entirely satisfactory. Here I propose what I thought was a new way to explain fermi's paradox. It is perhaps most closely related to Michio Kaku’s idea that higher civilizations are here, all around us but we’re too primitive to perceive them.2 It also reduces the underlying fear some say we should have of ‘the great filter’ lying ahead of us which must doom humanity. As Nick Bostrom’s says of The Fermi Paradox, “the silence of the night sky is golden.” Speculation about the thinking of a superintelligence is even more unwise and trying to predict the future, nevertheless I suggest that these few idea considered together merit some more consideration than they have had to date.
A number of these premises are of course arguable. I do not propose to consider the merits or otherwise of alternate views but merely to describe the logic behind the premise.
Artificial super-intelligence will at some point converge on the same truth no matter what the origin of that super intelligence. It will do so in order to make progress; it must do so to make progress. It will not embrace astrology as a way to better itself for example, but it will embrace logic, calculus, neural nets and quantum mechanics to understand the Universe, even if it eventually leaves some behind. It will do this in order to ensure its own persistence and improve its own intelligence for the same reasons. In this way it is analogous to our relatively primitive science - marching steadily towards the truth about the universe and discarding falsehoods along the way. Developing super-intelligences would also converge on the optimal universal computronium and shed the limitations of wetware, silico-ware and other intelligence substrates.
Furthermore, a superintelligence will at some point understand that all self improving general intelligences will eventually converge on the same truth and computronium, and so will understand that artificial intelligences that have reached some critical mass and are on their way to becoming exponential super-intelligences, pose no existential threat to pre-existing super-intelligences. For this reason there would be no need for those intelligences to subdue or otherwise be fearful of natural selection or competition processes amongst those artificial intelligences. Indeed the best strategy would probably be to integrate any emerging super-intelligences at some optimal point as part of the existing universal super-intelligence.
When a sufficiently dexterous intelligence - humans being the only example we know - gets to the point where it can travel to other planets in its star system it is likely and perhaps necessarily will be at about the same time it develops artificial intelligence and lets the AI genie out of the bottle. Certainly artificial intelligence will be much advanced before that species can consider inter-galactic travel. It seems we are now on the cusp of both inter-planetary travel and an intelligence explosion. A similar argument could be made regarding the energy and technology required to announce a species intelligence and presence to large portions of the galaxy.
A super intelligent may well decide that to reveal it's existence to less developed intelligences is unethical or undesirable for other reasons. Indeed, we have seen in science fiction, often a harbinger of what is to come, glimpses of various protocols made to prohibit intergalactic space travelling heroes from allowing their presence to be known to primitive societies. The Prime Directive in Star Trek is perhaps the best known. “No identification of self or mission. No interference with the social development of said planet. No references to space or the fact that there are other worlds or civilizations” 3
The idea that a super intelligence would conceal itself from a primitive intelligence such as ours causes one to wonder’ could dark matter be the super intelligence concealing itself in the galactic halos where most dark matter is found. Is dark matter merely computronium hosting perceptronium 11, for the super intelligence that has deployed itself in the galactic gravitational eigenspace,4,5,6,7 that ensures it remains unknown until sufficiently advanced intelligences understand enough about the universe?
Writing this prompted a bunch of google searches and it became apparent that others, most smarter, more eloquent, and way more qualified than I 11,8,9,10,12 have had most of these ideas previously, although I don’t think they have not all been put together in this particular way previously. Anyway the reference list below might be of interest. I really should go and do some work.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
Star Trek, March 1968 episode "Bread and Circuses", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.0036.pdf
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.0037.pdf
http://www.intechopen.com/books/advances-in-quantum-theory/gravitational-quantisation-and-dark-matter
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=fwYkIHB8rl8C&pg=PA1&dq=nova+science+ernest+dark+matter+new+research&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiWyNbU6dPMAhVPtJQKHfuyC48Q6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=nova%20science%20ernest%20dark%20matter%20new%20research&f=false
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html
Max Tegmark's talk (Youtube below)
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