The impact of AI on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence | 

Iyan Velji, Staff Writer | 

The pursuit to discover intelligent life akin to our own beyond Earth, also known as The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), is one of humanity’s most ambitious and profound scientific endeavours.

By discovering Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI), lives could be enriched with new information bringing the possibility of the beginning of a new Renaissance. The idea of detecting extraterrestrial communication dates back over a century.

In 1899, Nikola Tesla famously claimed to have detected “Martian signals” which he believed were radio emissions originating from Mars. Sixty years later, in 1959, the first academic paper on SETI was published by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison in the journal Nature.

This milestone was followed by the first SETI experiment a year later in 1960, Project Ozma, launched by astrophysicist Frank Drake.

More recently, the Breakthrough Listen initiative backed by scientists like Stephen Hawking has been scanning around one million stars in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies for technosignatures that could indicate the existence of intelligent civilizations that use advanced technology.

SETI research methods

At the heart of SETI is the Fermi Paradox, formulated by physicist Enrico Fermi, which highlights the discrepancy between the seemingly high probability of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations existing and the lack of evidence of their existence.

Given the universe’s immense age of approximately 13.6 billion years and the vast expanse of space, a great amount of advanced civilizations should have emerged millions of years before humanity embarked on interstellar missions.

One estimate for the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy is the Drake Equation developed by Frank Drake in 1961. According to the original values of the Drake Equation, there should be at least 50,000 extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.

Recent discoveries by missions like Kepler have reaffirmed this original estimate identifying thousands of exoplanets capable of supporting life within their stars’ habitable zones which are regions where conditions might allow liquid water to exist. The first confirmed planet found within the habitable zone of a star other than our sun is Kepler-22b, which is classified as a “Super Earth.”

Many SETI scientists propose utilizing the Moon as a prime location for groundbreaking extraterrestrial research. Above Earth’s ionosphere, the Moon offers access to low-frequency radio waves blocked by Earth’s interference, broadening the range of detectable signals.

Other scientists have proposed searching for pulses of laser light rather than radio waves in what is known as Optical SETI (OSETI). OSETI has gained traction as a promising approach to SETI research due to the advantages of optical signals for communication such as higher bandwidth, faster transmission rates and minimal interference. However, OSETI faces the challenge of filtering out background light from stars to detect faint signals.

A controversial form of SETI known as Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) focuses on actively sending messages into space with the intent of contacting extraterrestrial civilizations. In 2023, proponents of METI used the 500 metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China to transmit a binary message known as “The Beacon in the Galaxy.” Unfortunately, it will take 10,000 years before Earth can get a reply due to the vast distances involved.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Artifacts (SETA), another form of SETI research, looks for physical signs of alien technology within the solar system. Some scientists have hypothesized the first interstellar object detected passing through the Solar System, ‘Oumuamua, could be an interstellar probe transmitting or leaking radio waves. According to a 2023 draft paper, ‘Oumuamua could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth. These probes referred to as “dandelion seeds” might be engineered to slow down safely upon entering Earth’s atmosphere to land and explore.

SETI and AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be defined as “a system’s ability to interpret external data correctly, to learn from such data, and to use those learnings to achieve specific goals and tasks through flexible adaptation.”

In 2023, researchers at Breakthrough Listen were able to utilize deep learning, a subset of machine learning, to identify eight promising technosignatures worth investigating further. The research covered 820 targets and gathered over 480 hours of data using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope.

Advances in AI are also opening up new ways to look for signs of alien technology by enabling the identification of anomalies that could be side effects of alien activity. A key innovation in this approach is the development of an AI that can spot anything unusual compared to normal data patterns known as an “anomaly engine.” For example, machine learning and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) can help process phenomena such as fast radio bursts (FRBs) like FRB 010724 discovered six years after its initial detection in archived data.

Another advancement in AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), could help facilitate communication with extraterrestrial civilizations. Some scientists have proposed utilizing METI to transmit an LLM such as Meta’s Llama-3-70B or Mistral AI’s Mixtral 8x22B to an extraterrestrial civilization to interact with and receive detailed responses about humanity. While intriguing, this idea can be seen as both radical and risky due to the potential misuse of information by ETI and the technical challenges posed by the large sizes of most LLMs.

Advances in AI may have significantly shaped the development and capabilities of extraterrestrial civilizations. Some alien civilizations may have already reached the AI singularity, the point when the ability of computers overtakes the human brain.

In the end, SETI is as much a journey within as it is a search across the stars. It reminds us that our capacity to seek, question, and understand is boundless. Whether or not we ever detect an alien signal, SETI drives us to confront essential questions about intelligence, survival, and what it means to reach across the vastness of space in search of connection.

As we look to the future, one thing is clear: many see the quest to find intelligent life in the universe as, fundamentally, a quest to better understand ourselves.

Iyan Velji is a Staff Writer for The Reflector 2024-2025