Most Aliens May Be Artificial Intelligence, Not Life as We Know It

Fermi expressing his surprise over the absence of any signs for the existence of other intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way. Because a simple estimate showed that an advanced civilization could have reached every corner of the galaxy within a time much shorter than the galaxy’s age, the question arose: Why don’t we see them?

We would argue that this suggests three things about the entities that SETI searches could reveal:

They will not be organic or biological.

They will not remain on the surface of the planet where their biological precursors lived.

We will not be able to fathom their motives or intentions.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed ... See more

If alien intelligence has evolved similarly, we’d be most unlikely to catch it in the brief sliver of time when it was still embodied in the organic form. Particularly, were we to detect ET, it would be far more likely to be electronic, where the dominant creatures aren’t flesh and blood—and maybe aren’t even located on planets, but on stations in ... See more