This toot-thread about using ChatGPT/Bing to draft a paper for a medical course is just whack. Not only does it not do search properly, it makes stuff up (ahem: "lies"). https://fediscience.org/@ct_bergstrom/109969288031686699
@cstross I've been wondering if Weak AI explains the Fermi Paradox. Strong AI is a popular speculative apocalypse, but Weak AI is much easier to create. It's the gray goo of information, and perhaps as fatal.
@gray17 No, because all such answers are highly path-dependent (you have to posit our type of linguistic processing on top of our type of computing development timeline, our type of tech base, probably our type of anatomical layout) … consider smart squid that communicate through bioluminescence and chromatophores, for example?
Fermi paradox solutions have to be generic.
@cstross But symbol manipulation is likely to be almost universal, and "machine to do symbol manipulation" is also likely to be almost universal.
@cstross .. like, how do you have an alien civilization that can communicate across light-years, without it having machines that can create communication? That's a very small step to Weak AI.
@gray17 Define "civilization". Define "communication". Consider panspermia—now consider a planetary ecosystem where the climactic life forms shove spores into the upper atmosphere and use some mechanism (solar sails?) to spray them right out of their star system. Intelligence as we know it may not come into play at all, as long as the spores can grow into a new superorganism that exhibits adaptive behaviour.
@cstross But the Fermi Paradox is specifically about "why don't we see or communicate with aliens". There are many potential exotic aliens that never reach the "we can see them" phase, and light-speed limitation and the size of the universe is a simple explanation for "they never visit us"
@gray17 Wrong. The Fermi paradox as originally proposed asks, "why aren't they here?"
One possible solution is that they *are* here—in fact, that we're descended from them. Or that there are incompatible biospheres that are biochemically not interacting with our own coexisting in eg. the deep oceans or the lithosphere.
All of this is overcomplicating things. The purpose of intelligence is to make itself unnecessary. What else is 'problem solving?' Once the most troubling issues for a species are dealt with, the final problem becomes the now-unnecessary overhead of feeding intelligence itself.
At that point, intelligence has the same utility as, say, antlers. Pretty, but mostly there to make you look sexy.
We shouldn't be looking for space probes.
We should be looking for antlers.
@gray17
@KarlSchroeder @gray17 Insofar as the purpose of a system is what it does, and life is a system for copying itself into the future, we *might* want to keep a weather eye open for life—intelligent or otherwise—visiting from extra-solar locales, if only because it might find us crunchy and good with ketchup. Earth is only 4.5 GY old; the universe has a 9 GY lead on our biosphere. That seems like plenty of time for panspermia to evolve and come looking for more energy and chemicals to snack on.
@cstross
In "Cowboys and Aliens," they come to steal our gold. That is preposterous. The only resource we have that can't be found in overwhelming abundance everywhere else in the universe is our specific global biosystem--the system as a whole at this point in its evolution. That is the only unique, immovable resource Earth possesses.
The question would then be, what could the utility be of that specific object? Destroying it destroys what makes it valuable. But what is it good for?
@gray17
@KarlSchroeder @cstross @gray17 We don't know.
Spider silk? Deep ocean metal-ion chiton? That stunningly efficient vanadium extraction enzyme in tunciates? maple syrup? the scent of sleeping weasels?
Mature aliens will look like doing a genetic and chemical analysis of EVERYTHING. Immature aliens look like a drug trade.
@graydon @KarlSchroeder @cstross @gray17
Chocolate. It turns out that earth creatures mostly have evolved immunity to the specific volatiles in refined cocoa, but to other carbon-based lifeforms it's an addictive drug with a potency that puts the effects of fentanyl on humans to shame.
@fizbin @graydon @KarlSchroeder @gray17 *Far* too anthropocentric to be plausible. (You realize that theobromine is highly toxic to most mammals? We're weird insofar as we enjoy it.)
@cstross @fizbin @KarlSchroeder @gray17 One of those little factoids that can rearrange your world view (or at least, it did mine); pretty much everything humans cultivate because it tastes interesting evolved as insecticide.
(The glimpses we get into unicellular ecologies show constant chemical warfare of all against all. Multicellular life emerges from that context.)
@dpwiz @cstross @fizbin @KarlSchroeder @gray17 It's important to remember that our taste buds and our livers are not directly connected.
"This stuff is amazing!"/"Your entire liver has died" is the likely pattern of outcome, even when it's not bitter like the devil's regrets spread over potash.