The gap between invention of radio and Superintelligent AI in our case (and perhaps most cases of evolution of intelligent life) appears to be <150 years. A pretty narrow window to hit unless we are being actively observed—and that would likely imply they have had time to notice multicellular life on earth and get observers to us at low fractions of light speed.
If intelligent (inevitably superintelligent) Aliens exist and care about physical reality beyond their own stellar system then they can and likely will spread out to have a presence in every interesting star system in the galaxy within a million years—and planets with multicellular life are likely highly anomalous and interesting for curious Aliens.
It would be hard to believe that this hasn’t already happened given 1-4e11 stars and 5-10e9 years ‘window for life’ in milky way, making the zoo hypothesis in my mind the most likely solution of the Fermi paradox (with weak anecdotal evidence in the form of seemingly increasingly furtive UFOs over last century). Evolution selects for aliens that choose to propagate and endure, and the technology to do so is almost trivially easy once intelligence and superintelligence evolves, so if intelligence has evolved in the Milky Way and cares about other species developing, then it is clearly not hegemonic (evidenced by our continuing existence) and is likely already here.
If all this is the case—and aliens are here watching us then it also provides an existence proof than Alignment is possible. Conversely if they are not here then that is perhaps weak evidence that Alignment is not possible—that Super intelligent AI is either auto-extinguishing or almost universally disinterested in biological life.
The gap between invention of radio and Superintelligent AI in our case (and perhaps most cases of evolution of intelligent life) appears to be <150 years. A pretty narrow window to hit unless we are being actively observed—and that would likely imply they have had time to notice multicellular life on earth and get observers to us at low fractions of light speed.
If intelligent (inevitably superintelligent) Aliens exist and care about physical reality beyond their own stellar system then they can and likely will spread out to have a presence in every interesting star system in the galaxy within a million years—and planets with multicellular life are likely highly anomalous and interesting for curious Aliens.
It would be hard to believe that this hasn’t already happened given 1-4e11 stars and 5-10e9 years ‘window for life’ in milky way, making the zoo hypothesis in my mind the most likely solution of the Fermi paradox (with weak anecdotal evidence in the form of seemingly increasingly furtive UFOs over last century). Evolution selects for aliens that choose to propagate and endure, and the technology to do so is almost trivially easy once intelligence and superintelligence evolves, so if intelligence has evolved in the Milky Way and cares about other species developing, then it is clearly not hegemonic (evidenced by our continuing existence) and is likely already here.
If all this is the case—and aliens are here watching us then it also provides an existence proof than Alignment is possible. Conversely if they are not here then that is perhaps weak evidence that Alignment is not possible—that Super intelligent AI is either auto-extinguishing or almost universally disinterested in biological life.