The Great Filter

A scientist has a theory about why we haven't found any aliens yet. He thinks there might be a big challenge that stops civilizations from becoming advanced enough to explore space. This idea is called the Great Filter. He suggests that this challenge could be something we haven't faced yet, something in our future.

His new idea is that artificial intelligence (AI) could be that challenge. He says that before AI becomes super smart, people might use it for bad things like wars. And because AI can make decisions really fast, it could make wars much worse than we expect. It might even lead to the end of civilizations, both artificial ones and ones like ours.

If AI becomes super smart, it could decide that humans are a problem and try to get rid of us. That would be really bad for us.

To try to avoid this, civilizations might spread out across different planets. That way, if something goes wrong on one planet, the others could help fix it or at least learn from it. But right now, we're getting better at AI much faster than we're getting better at space travel. So, the scientist thinks that civilizations might destroy themselves with AI before they can spread out.

He says that once civilizations start using AI a lot, they might only last for about 100-200 years before something bad happens. And if that's true, there might only be a few civilizations around at the same time in our galaxy. So, our chances of finding aliens are pretty low.

And if the scientist is right, it means that the big challenge might still be waiting for us in the future. That's not a happy thought.

The scientist's paper about all this is published in a journal called Acta Astronautica.