NASA star nebula image on display as man contemplates the vastness of space and human existence.
No signs of life — just signs of AI: Expert says aliens may have been wiped out before first contact.
Credit: nataliajakubcova, Shutterstock
Top astro brains say AI could be the universe’s ultimate kill switch. Are we playing with fire?
Could humanity be the next in a long line of cosmic civilisations to be KO’d by its own clever tech? Two top astrophysicists are sounding the alarm – and the galaxy’s gone a bit quiet lately, hasn’t it?
Professor Michael Garrett, a big brain from the University of Manchester, has suggested that the reason we haven’t heard a peep from any alien life forms might be because they’ve all fallen victim to an AI apocalypse. In his paper for Acta Astronautica, he warns that the emergence of artificial superintelligence (ASI) may act as a “great filter” – a deadly milestone that most civilisations can’t survive.
“If ASI arrives too quickly,” Garrett writes, “civilisations might last less than a century after developing radio technology.” That’s an eye-watering short blip in galactic time — from sending a signal to space in 1960 to a potential AI-triggered wipeout by 2040.
Tick tock, the clock is ticking.
Meanwhile, Lord Martin Rees, the UK’s Astronomer Royal, says aliens might not be little green men at all — but cold, calculating mega-minds made of metal. Writing for the BBC, Rees argues that intelligent alien life could be entirely artificial, and that our telescopes simply aren’t equipped to detect AI civilisations. “We may be the brief organic phase before the machines take over,” he says.
So, is the reason we haven’t had a cosmic ‘hello’ because the universe is littered with smart civilisations that built machines… and then vanished?
Whether it’s war-waging AI, rogue robots, or simply tech moving too fast for its creators, both Garrett and Rees agree: it’s time for serious rules on AI — before we become just another eerie silence in the stars.
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