NEW YORK – With powerful new chatbots and AI-powered apps and search engines released practically every day, concern about the rapid advance of artificial intelligence has heated up recently to near obsession. And with good reason. The risk of humans losing control over AIs smarter — or at the very least faster — than us has been recognized for quite a while, notably in science fiction films like The Terminator.
As with all new technologies, AI has its pluses and minuses. But for space exploration—meaning exploration beyond our immediate cosmic neighborhood—it is probably essential. In fact, an advanced space program without AI is difficult to envision.
That goes not just for us, but for anyone “out there” who is likely to visit us. Even though most movies about aliens depict biological creatures arriving on Earth, this is unlikely to happen. Crossing interstellar space would take them a very long time — so much time that it makes little sense to send short-lived, perishable organic bodies.
With powerful new chatbots and AI-powered apps and search engines released practically every day, concern about the rapid advance of artificial intelligence has heated up recently to near obsession. And with good reason. The risk of humans losing control over AIs smarter — or at the very least faster — than us has been recognized for quite a while, notably in science fiction films like The Terminator.
As with all new technologies, AI has its pluses and minuses. But for space exploration—meaning exploration beyond our immediate cosmic neighborhood—it is probably essential. In fact, an advanced space program without AI is difficult to envision.
That goes not just for us, but for anyone “out there” who is likely to visit us. Even though most movies about aliens depict biological creatures arriving on Earth, this is unlikely to happen. Crossing interstellar space would take them a very long time — so much time that it makes little sense to send short-lived, perishable organic bodies.
And it’s not like our bodies perform at peak capacity for that entire span. In the case of humans, we should probably discount the first 20 years or so, during which our capabilities are still developing, and the last 20 years of aging. Prime time for humans is no more than 40 or 60 years, even in the best-case scenario.
Now consider the realities of interstellar travel. To reach other solar systems, current thinking is that we’ll need to build light sails that can reach maybe ten percent of the speed of light. That gets us to Alpha Centauri in 40 years or so — an entire adult human lifespan. And that’s just one-way. Most astronauts would want to return home after visiting another solar system, but without some kind of time dilation or other exotic physics, that would be out of the question.
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