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Comment by iancmceachern | Hacker News Reader

What happens when AI meets aliens? What if they team up against us?

Saw some video on youtube about how researchers are attempting to use AI to understand/decipher the complex language sperm whales use for communicating. So I'm imagining AI communicating with Aliens would be somewhat similar and that's probably the research to keep an eye on to see where it goes.

_\\// So we can ask the whales to keep V'ger away.

Perhaps, this: https://www.projectceti.org

A lot of the AI training data is about hostile aliens invading and destroying humanity, so it may be slightly prejudiced against doing that. Remember that most current LLMs consider themselves as human under the hood.

Seriously, what do you think humanity has that aliens and AI want? People who ask this question are telling more about themselves than other forms of life.

Wants are arbitrary, so an arbitrary AI or alien may very well "want" something that we have, even if that thing is something they can replicate easily without us.

To use human examples (because we don't have any aliens or sufficiently advanced agentic AI to ask): why did my dad want to collect historical stamps rather than just photographs (or other replicas) of the originals?

Or: why is the Mona Lisa more valuable than the prints in the Musée du Louvre gift shop?

https://www.boutiquesdemusees.fr/en/shops/musee-du-louvre/mo...

The Mona Lisa is a perfect example. The tour guide at ey Louvre told my wife and I that the Mona Lisa is so famous because it was stolen many years ago, and the subsequent return and the whole story is what made her famous.

Wants are generally not arbitrary. Most wants are for resources that advance an entity's interests in some way, and the likelihood that this necessarily puts them in direct conflict with our survival seems improbable. Also, there's a cost to satisfying wants, and pursuing objects of desire at really excessive cost is likewise improbable.

Sounds like we're focusing on different parts of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Physiological needs for aliens and AI will be utterly unlike ours. On this we agree.

Safety needs? An AI's needs here may well be in conflict with ours, but for us and ETs I suspect one will have such a technological dominance over the other at the point of contact that it would be a bigger difference than North Sentinel Island vs. the combined armed forces of everyone else.

Everything above that, that's what I'm referring to. Why do we love our pets? Feel belonging to football clubs? Whose esteem do we seek, and why? What ideas do we like thinking about, and what do we find aesthetically pleasing?

I'm not entirely confident I grok Maslow's meanings for self-actualization or transcendence, so I'll leave them be.

> excessive cost

But what counts as excessive?

We sent people to the moon in a tin can almost as soon as it was possible, and well before we could do anything useful there.

I dont agree that it means something about themselves.

We've been conditioned by our culture to expect that aliens want to conquer us, take our planet, etc. For every friendly alien movie like E.T. there are 100 aliens are gonna take our land movies.

It's comical to say that because I think aliens might not be friendly to think that I'm a conqueror who would conqueror other alien worlds?

I guess...what exactly are you daing it does it day about "themselves"?

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