By John Prytz
When it comes to UFO entities, ancient astronauts, and aliens in general as depicted in sci-fi films and television; even short stories and novels, for the most part they presented as normal squishy flesh-and-blood organisms, even if they have green blood, pointed ears, antenna, or are living rocks, like “Star Trek’s” Horta. Even “Doctor Who’s” Daleks are partly squishy; ditto the Cybermen also of “Doctor Who” fame.
However, I suggest that for the normal picture of all things extraterrestrial substitute flesh-and-blood (natural CHON – Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen – or related) for artificial constructions made from silicon and steel. Call them robots or androids or just plain artificial intelligence; call them Data (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”) or HAL (“2001: A Space Odyssey”) or V’Ger (“Star Trek: The Motion Picture”) or Gort (“The Day the Earth Stood Still” – and by the by, in the original short story, it was the robot that was the master and in charge, not the flesh-and-blood alien Klaatu). And who can forget R2-D2 or 3CPO (“Star Wars”). So, IMHO, if you have an up close and personal encounter with an ET, it’s not going to be with biological intelligence but with technological or artificial intelligence.
Extraterrestrial or terrestrial, our sci-fi films are full of intelligent machines or robots, from “I, Robot” to “Futureworld” and “Westworld” (where nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong) to “Cherry 2000” to “The Stepford Wives” to “Saturn 3” to the “Bicentennial Man” to the entire “Transformers” series. Today it’s sci-fi; tomorrow it’s science-fact.
Several reasons suggest why.
THE RISE AND RISE OF THE MACHINE
Any scientifically advanced alien society will sooner or later invent the computer or equivalent. Once invented, you can’t put the genie back into the bottle. Machines are gaining the upper hand here at Terra Firma and have been ever since humans came up with the idea of a tool. If you doubt this, ask any typical teen/young adult to do without their mobile/smart-phone and/or tablet; ask a housewife to forgo the programmable microwave oven, her vacuum cleaner or programmable dishwasher; ask a househusband to hand over the remote or the keys to his new red sports car with state of the art GPS and other computer programmable accessories (necessary therapy for those suffering from male menopause). And where would NASA be without all those robotic space probes to the Moon and planets (some of which have to have a rudimentary degree of intelligence since radio commands from Earth can take quite some considerable time to reach the planetary rover)? Even if one excludes non-programmable ‘dumb’ machines and machine technologies like clothes dryers, coffee makers, lawn mowers, and radar, the number of ‘smart’ machines – super computers, PCs, tablets, smart-phones, etc. is getting damn close right now to the human population. One can even buy today robotic toys, ‘pets’ and even companions for the very sick, elderly, outcasts or lonely. Can sex with robotic partners be far behind?
Computing crunch power increases by order of magnitudes faster than biological wetware crunch power (Moore’s Law). Human intellectual capacity hasn’t increased very much, if at all, over the past 50,000 years or so – our IQ has flat-lined. Machine intelligence, though off to a slow start all those 50,000 years ago, is however increasing at an exponential rate. The lines have to cross eventually; sometime. The crossover point is tipped for the not too distant future and probably within the lifetime of most viewers reading this. Computer programs can already beat you every time at chess and a host of other games besides.
Unlike humans, computers can link up to form a super-computer (recall the film “Colossus: The Forbin Project”) otherwise known today as the Internet. Or, in other words, eventually an artificial intelligence can merge with another artificial intelligence to create a mega artificial intelligence, which in turn could merge with another mega artificial intelligence, and so on.
As noted above, there will come a time when machine intelligence, artificial intelligence, surpasses biological or wetware intelligence. That will become a point where computers will become intelligent and self-aware enough to pass the Turing Test – that’s where someone cannot tell the difference between a human or a computer answering questions in an interview type of scenario.
Once wetware becomes dependent on software, intelligent self-aware machines call the shots and they are in control. Whether this human-machine relationship remains a symbiotic one or not is not that relevant since the relationship will not be 50-50. Recall the “Terminator” films!
The increase in artificial intelligence will ever increase faster and faster, especially when intelligent machines can themselves design their own next generation and the generation after that all in a matter of days, hours, and minutes. And reproduction is not an issue. ‘Asexual’ robotic reproduction is a given – one machine builds a copy, or more likely as not, a better copy of itself, and as many as deemed necessary, especially if they are sent out into the cosmos to ‘boldly go’ where probably lots of other robotics probes from other civilizations have gone before. See below.
In the timeline of any technologically advanced alien society, odds are great that the bulk of that timeline will be represented by artificial intelligence relative to wetware or biological intelligence.
Most alien societies will be not just dozens, hundreds, thousands of years in advance of human society, but hundreds of thousands to millions of years more advanced. That is to say, most alien societies will be artificially intelligent societies; robotic societies if you will.
When it comes from getting from somewhere out there (wherever that is) to here (Planet Earth), robotic ‘life’ forms have all the advantages.
They have, for all practical purposes, robots or intelligent computers or artificial intelligence (for lack of a better word or phrase) would have a lifespan measured in such timeframes as to make any interstellar travel equivalent to humans taking a leisurely stroll around their local park. There’s no need for energy intensive interstellar velocities even remotely approaching the speed of light. The galaxy has been around long enough to allow for exploration (and colonization) hundreds of times over at even expansion rates one percent light speed.
They (robots again) have no need for all of the cumbersome and weight enhancing luxuries of what humans or biological entities would require for interstellar journeys: life-support basically in the form of artificial gravity, an atmosphere, heating, food and water, waste recycling technologies, privacy requirements, sex, entertainment, etc. Any saving in weight is a saving in energy. Robotic ‘life’ forms could cross the galaxy (or just go from star A to star B) in what for all practical purposes one could describe as shutdown or sleep mode.
Why would artificial intelligences (AI) boldly go in any event? Any intelligences designing AI must exhibit a mastery of science and technology. In order to achieve that they must exhibit that trait we call curiosity. That trait, instilled into AI, or intelligent wetware downloaded into silicon chips, would exhibit curiosity. What’s over that hill translated into a cosmic setting is what’s beyond that star and the one beyond that, etc.
One flaw in advocating a pure form of robotic intelligence boldly going is that one could argue instead that it’s the original biological entities who need to boldly go, but that’s easily accomplished if their wetware in an organic housing (i.e. – their skull) could be downloaded as software in a metallic housing. That humans could download their mind into a computer has been suggested and advocated by many as a technologically feasible way to achieve virtual immortality. By the by, that human wetware downloaded as robotic software, that feasibility has been suggested as being possible within this century, not millennia down the track.
We’ve made a start already!
THE RISE AND RISE OF THE CYBORG: ARTIFICIAL BODY BITS & PIECES
We’re already on the way with the merger of man and machine; the natural with the artificial.
Head & Neck: There’s dentures; teeth fillings; eyeglasses; hearing aids; the bionic ear; the bionic eye; speech synthesisers; metal skull replacement head plates, etc.
Waist Up: We’ve implanted pacemakers; heart valves; artificial hearts; arm prosthetics; artificial shoulder, elbow and wrist joints; artificial kidneys (via kidney dialysis); and the iron lung.
Waist Down: At the very least there are artificial hip, knee and ankle joints; leg prosthetics, peg legs; and leg braces.
General: You wear clothes (replacing fur, feathers and scales); you wrap yourself in a heating blanket; you ‘wear’ your car in that you wrap it around you (or bicycle, skateboard, roller skates, etc. – they become a part or extension of you); the mobile/smart phone is an obvious example of the merger of flesh and machine, and one where all too often it’s the technology controlling the user, not the user controlling the technology. People use walking canes/sticks; walkers; and wheelchairs, some motorized and some so integral or inseparable to their users or ‘wearers’ that they jointly appear to be a virtual cybernetic entity – think of the most famous or widely known case history cosmologist-astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and his wheelchair come quasi-life-enhancing system, though that pales compared to the environmental suits worn by astronauts – moon walkers or EVA space-walkers – or deep-sea divers. Then there is plastic surgery.
What’s Next: Common in various medical situations are drips that via gravity ‘feed’ patients with their necessary drug, energy and other required vitamin/mineral supplements. That suggests to me that one can bypass the entire digestive system (teeth, oesophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine) by just having a one-way artificial valve that connects the outer skin surface with the bloodstream and that all body nutriments in the required amounts custom designed for the needs of any specific individual be injected directly into their bloodstream via this valve on an as-needed basis.
But the ultimate will be the desire or need to eliminate all flesh-and-blood bits-and-pieces, thus all diseases (including ageing) and injuries associated with flesh-and-blood, by keeping the only bit that’s really necessary – the mind – and recreating the wetware contents as software, downloaded into hardware within a nearly immortal plastic and steel ‘body’.
EXPLANATIONS RELATED TO ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS AND UFOs
What might extraterrestrial robotics help explain when it comes to ancient astronaut theory and the UFO phenomena? A few items come to the fore.
Dragons are universals in human mythology. All cultures have dragon-lore. Anytime there is a concept that cuts across all societies, one needs to sit up and take notice. Dragons, for example, aren’t a one-off, confines say to ancient China. Dragons are frequently represented as the go-between the ‘gods’ (ancient astronauts or extraterrestrials) and humans. Given their ‘fire-breathing’ nature and ability to fly, it’s not inconceivable that dragons were really real, but not flesh-and-blood creatures but high-tech extraterrestrial devices of an aerial nature.
Hybrids, either human-animal or animal-animal (like dragons) are another example of a universal in human mythology that needs some coming to grips with. Though I’ve postulated that mythological hybrids, like say the Sphinx, might have been products of alien genetic engineering, it’s not that easy to say graft on a pair of wings on a horse (i.e. – Pegasus) and have it fly. There’s a lot of anatomical infrastructure that needs to be addressed and redesigned in order to make that happen. If these hybrids were mechanical or robotic, that avoids a lot of messy genetic mucking around with flesh-and-blood.
UFOs and the Greys: So, might the UFO ‘greys’ actually be robotic or an android ‘life’ form, an extraterrestrial artificial intelligence (ETAI)? Well, why not? I’ve yet to read any account that proved the ‘greys’ were functioning flesh-and-blood ETI. For all of their outward spindly appearance, they seem to be far stronger than their physiology would give them credit for. No one has seen them bleed or have bruises or scars; No arm or leg casts suggest no broken bones, not even a limp; nor have there been reports of sniffles and sneezes; they certainly look asexual and even act robotic as if on autopilot as well as being totally emotionless. When it comes to age, all seem to be the same age; there’s no sign of aging or age differentials. An artificially intelligent ‘life’ form could take on just about any outward appearance its designers wanted it to have. Natural biological evolution and natural selection are totally irrelevant when it comes to robotics or artificial intelligence (AI), including their outward appearance.
One other factor in favour of the UFO being a representation of ETAI instead of ETI is that some UFOs have been observed, eyeball and radar, to make manoeuvres that no squishy flesh-and-blood body could withstand but would be of little consequence to silicon chips.
SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a logical evolutionary development that supersedes Natural (biological squishy) Intelligence housed in wetware. Once AI takes the reins, there’s no putting the genie back into the bottle and AI just goes from strength to strength. Assuming technological civilizations can last relatively lengthy periods of time, odds suggest most of a civilization’s timeline will be of the software variety relative to the wetware variety.
Though there’s no theoretical impediment to wetware crisscrossing, exploring and colonizing the galaxy, there’s even less, way, way less theoretical impediment to software doing the same, especially if software supersedes wetware relatively quickly and thus has a greater timeframe in which to accomplish this. If they don’t find you coming from one direction, they will find you coming from the opposite side since the odds are great that there are lots of advanced robotic civilizations out there.
Since humans are the new boys on the old galactic block, we’re way, way, way more likely to have been discovered (probably hundreds of times over) by extraterrestrial civilizations hundreds, thousands, even millions of years our seniors. The odds are vastly in favour of such a discovery or rather discoveries by alien others, especially robotic alien others since robots are more likely to have a long-term existence and ease in boldly going.
Thus, there is quite some theoretical credibility to the concept of ancient visitations by ancient (robotic) extraterrestrial astronauts. That being the case, there is also quite some theoretical credibility to the concept of modern visitations by modern (robotic) extraterrestrial astronauts. There are some facets of the ancient astronaut and the modern (UFO) astronaut hypothesis that are better explained by robotic software than flesh-and-blood wetware.