The future is unknowable, therefore the evolution of intelligent life MUST include enough biological variation to endure the continuation of (in the first instance) the particular species, but more importantly, for life in general.

Evolution's way of creating this variety is genetic variety through the development of two different sexes….hard to imagine something like this being implemented in AI…
When intelligent entities such as Humans degign AI, it is with a specific function in mind – where would the ESSENTIAL variety come from?

Also, with biological life, traits which appear disadvantageous may actually be beneficial, e.g. Sickle Cell Anemia = defense against Malaria.

It is also hard to see how AI would emulate important trraits such as imagination, curiosity, ambition etc
…having said that, "fuzzy logic" is an interesting development…
…still, like I said – Not gonna happen! …IMHO, of course!

p.s. Dan Boyce… relative to the age of the Universe, intelligent life on this planet has been here just a micro-moment… An intelligent species younger than us, would, in Universe terms, be simultaneous… the odds of that happening are so small as to be (almost) inconceivable!

p.p.s. Quote from eMJay: "i know now that the government knows they exist"

You know nothing of the sort. If you are so uninformed as to believe such things, please don't present your OPINIONS as FACT.
I don't deny your right to voice such OPINION, but presenting them in such a manner is only likely to drive of potential contributors who could give you intelligent insight into such things, rather than National Enquirer style coverage…

Looking at what we have now and declaring that the end is not the way to do it. In the early 1990s, after having worked a decade on decoding the human genome, we'd only decoded 1%. This led short-sighted people to say it would take a hundred years to complete the project…but the job was done within the next ten years.

So looking at a crude technological accomplishment and concluding it'll never be better than what biology has produced is a big mistake.

Just recently a legless sprinter was banned from competing in the Olympics because his artificial limbs gave him an advantage over biological limbs. Granted, the limbs lack sensation and flexibility, but they've already bested human limbs in one area.

I'd be willing to bet $1000 that within 15 years we'll have machine parts that function better than the human equivalent in ALL ways. And within 20 years we should have machines that function better than humans in ALL ways…and certainly within 30 years.

As for the plausibility of AI taking over, it is actually possible. We could just start augmenting our minds and bodies with technology and continue to do so until we reach the point that we don't need biology anymore and we can just manufacture ourselves and preserve our minds forever in silicon. Once your mind is made of non-biological components, you would be "artificial intelligence" yourself.

This further means that we would theoretically not be able to tell a living cell with a biological origin apart from a living cell with a technological origin. Nor would it matter if we did. Obviously we could also build a multi-celled organism in the same fashion, and if we built both male and female organisms, then they would be capable of sex, and could reproduce through normal sexual means ( and also obviously, with us).

Enough said.

I think that it would be unreasonable to assume that a galaxy containing intelligent life could ever be completely populated…after all, only planets with environments friendly enough to be inhabitable could be used to support the lifeform that wants to move about…that also means that the distance between any two habitable planets would be very great…I don't expect that any more than one percent of all planets in a galaxy could support the life of a given lifeform…therefore to find a whole galaxy anywhere teeming with life is impossible, if not more improbable than the possibility of the existence of intelligent life itself.

I think it's safe to assume that any life outside of earth wouldn't know english..unless they were able to listen to our radio broadcasts and figure it out….we have thousands of languages here on earth and they have changed over time…we couldn't use modern english to talk to anyone who spoke the english of 2000 years ago…the only reason we speak as much english as we do is colonisation.

Alien life are not even guaranteed to use sound energy to communicate. For all we know, sound energy may be associated with plant life on their world so they may not look for it in a radio signal from 'animal' beings.They may use light energy or radio waves or some other form of energy and do so in ways that we haven't imagined yet…Even if they use sound waves, they may use it at frequencies that we can't hear or speak( eg. Ultrasound range). In any case, they will not know that the signal on the carrier wave is a sound wave…and we would sound like gibberish to them anyway. One alternaltive is to use mathematics to communicate..math is the language of the universe….

Actually, the most intelligent way for them to respond would be simple…just copy the signal and send it back to the sender..they could also attach a signal of their own to the message we sent them to verify that intelligent life sent it…If we send a math signal that they could decode, they could send it back with the solution or the next value in the equation.

The speed at which they respond (if at all)may depend on factors that we haven't considered..they could be at war when the signal arrives there and are too busy to listen or respond…or (my personal favorite), they could end up going to war with each other over the meaning of the signal!!! either way we get no reply.

Another thing is that we assume that alien life forms will be of the same size scale as us…is it guaranteed at all earth like planets will be earth-sized planets? And that the life forms will be earth sized?

There was a period when life on this planet got really really large; even the bugs got large. It would have stayed that way too were it not for a calamity that befell the dinosaurs and the largest plantlife. Therefore we owe our existence to really good luck that wiped them away…and yet we needed them…we use the carbon materials that they ended up as to power our technology.

as for A.I life…it's possible that some advanced race may have sent out A.I. craft and robots to find life outside of their world..If the craft and/or bots have a renewable energy supply they could travel for millions of years without end, searching for signals of life. The civilisation that sent them may have done so before there was even life on this planet, perhaps before our sun even existed.
There may very well be probes looking for us…but they are more likely looking IN THE WRONG GALAXY!!!

there are billions of galaxies the universe that we know of. Even if there were only one planet in each milkyway-type galaxy harbouring intelligence species, it would still mean billions of possible examples of intelligent life should exist…so i think it's safe to assume that intelligent life exists out there. However, it may just be too far our there.

Here's the thing…I don't buy the common explanation that they are extraterrestrial….the appearance pattern and their behavior don't add up with that explanation. why would extraterrestrials fly so far to avoid contact with us and take soil samples, as was noted by a doctor who witnessed them in action one night? Here's what i think….they're human, but not 2008 human, more like 20000008 human. Clear evidence exists of some sort of humanoid associated with these craft – suggesting to me a relation to primates (or maybe mammals)…which suggests an origin from earth…if you're from earth but not from now or the past then you've got to be from the future. I think they're time-travelling archaeologists just here to study us…

it explains why the craft have such varying designs and appear in no particular patterns and why a craft design can be seen in 1960 and then again in 1990 while a different design is seen in other sightings in the intervening years…the two sightings are likely of the same craft, the same "aliens," so it's technically one sighting at two points in time..literally.

Crop circles confused me until i heard that metal filings are typically found in the soil atter these occurances and they had the same pattern as the vegetation. I figure it's probably some sort of time-stamp using metal placed into the soil to let them map when they are in time…hence the so-called hot spots for sighting them.

i won't go into all the things i think add up with this (there's quite a bit), but i just mentioned this to say that we may already know what the future holds for us in terms of development as a species. If these 'creatures' are really us from the future it would mean that we will survive as a species against all odds..despite A.I. however the short nature of these creatures also worries me…miniaturisation is associated with long-term famine…could this be a clue of perilous times in our own future? Or perhaps they are really biomechanical droids sent to explore us on behalf of our decendents? only time will tell i guess…

I think that anyone who thinks that normal humans will always be the pinnacle of cognitive prowess are just short sighted, or perhaps just victims of wishful thinking.

You just need one self aware machine and that's it. Once machines can design and build improved versions of themselves Humans need not be involved. At which point unaugmented folks will be at a severe disadvantage.

I concur with a poster above in thinking that the biological sciences will also see explosive advances enabling humans to keep pace with their machine progeny.

My $.02, YMMV, IMHO, FWIW, ETC

One argument goes that if intelligence exists out there, within a few thousand years (a blink of an eye in cosmic terms), an entire galaxy would likely be completely populated. Thus, the fact that we haven't yet contacted alien life is strong evidence against the odds that intelligent life exists out there.

Of course, it's always possible that there ARE other species out there, but we're the most advanced of all of them…but with a 13.7 billion year old universe, and if planetary systems capable of supporting life existed perhaps as far back as 12 billion years ago…the odds are pretty slim that we're at the technological forefront…unless we're the only ones (or one of a very select few in the entire universe).

Actually, there's no evidence at all that altruism and compassion have anything to do with a "soul." There are plenty of compelling evolutionary explanations for these traits that would be naturally selected for in social species.

Numerous other mammalian, avian and other species exhibit altruism and compassion very much like their human equivalents. Does that mean they all have a "soul," for which we've yet to find evidence? Or is it simply an evolutionarily advantageous trait? Evidence ultimately trumps faith every time.

So there is no reason to believe machines can't have compassion and altruism. A reverse-engineered human brain would function like its human counterpart and thus possess the same personality traits.

Actually, because it's easier to modify machines than biology using our technologies, we could make machines MORE moral and MORE compassionate than any human. Think about that.

It just may be that there are a lot of advanced but non-technological species in the universe as well. And by advanced, I mean in anything other than technology, such as perhaps philosophy, behavior, or other aspects of existence that we may have never considered.

So there is a place I believe for "advanced" life in the universe that is not "technologically advanced", and hence would not evolve into machine life.

I'm new to all this info about space. I'm 87 years old.

Can we increase the speed of radio waves for communications to the speed of one light year/second, in order to be able to talk to them?
Even then, how long before they can get an answer from us?

Are we talking about just getting a signal of some kind from them?

Approx. when do you think an answer could come to us? The year 3000, 4000?

Am I just an old coot who doesn't understand what he's talking about?

I don't get angry with insults, so give me answer please.