Something just doesn’t add up.
Apparently, we are on the verge of an AI revolution. In the future, AI may even be the dominant entity on this planet. Given that it will continuously improve upon itself once it’s sentient and has the technical capability (which, apparently, is not too far off), does it not make sense that it would eventually reach god-like status in thousands of years? What about millions of years, or even billions? Would it not eventually reach the point where it is on par with whatever created all this? Then what?
But for the sake of argument, let’s take AI out of the picture for a minute and pretend that it will fizzle out. What will humans be like in 1000 years? What about a million, or a billion? Ignoring the fact that we’d likely destroy ourselves first, or succumb to some unknown species ending event, what will our world look like in a million years?
No doubt, we’d have colonized our galaxy – or maybe even other galaxies. We will have had time to develop technology to the point where it would be routine to travel to the other side of the milky way for business or a vacation.
And if AI takes over (which it will, if we continue on this path), it would be able to accomplish all that much sooner. Give AI a million years, and it will have taken over the entire galaxy and beyond. And as mentioned, it’ll eventually be on par with the technology that creates our reality.
So, here is my problem with all this:
Our universe is over 13 billion years old. Our milky way galaxy is also over 13 billion years old. Recent estimates are that the universe contains 2 trillion galaxies. By extrapolating numbers, it’s been estimated that there are 10E25 planets orbiting stars in the known universe.
Many of the planets will not have life, let alone intelligent life, but even if a small percentage does, we are talking about billions of candidates. Just in our Milky Way galaxy, there is estimated to be up to 6 billion planets that could support life. Of those, surely there are some intelligent civilizations.
And even if we are the only planet with intelligent life in the Milky Way, what about the other 2 trillion galaxies?
It would be naive to think that there are no other advanced civilizations out there – civilizations much more advanced than ours.
Actually, there should be other planets with intelligent life that are millions or billions of years ahead of us. And if there are, should we not see some proof? Given that incredible time span, they should be traversing the galaxy back and forth effortlessly.
Yet, there is nothing. Not even an alien signal, let alone inter-galactic fighters, shuttles, transport ships…nothing.
Yeah, that sounds far-fetched until you realize that we earthlings would certainly have inter-galactic ships in that amount of time. Ships that would be detected by worlds like ours with similar current technology.
Should we not have been colonized, studied, or simply eradicated by now? And if not, at least contacted?
Our telescopes keep getting better, yet nothing changes. All we see are galaxies, stars, quasars, black holes, supernovas, etc. All natural and nothing artificial – how can that be?
Surely, there are at least a handful of planets with advanced technology. Heck, there should even be a few that have lost control of their AI. Yet we see no evidence of artificial lifeforms dominating the galaxy/universe.
Again, imagine our AI in a billion years. Surely other advanced civilizations across the galaxy would notice our space robots.
It’s a mystery.
