(ORDO NEWS) — Approximately 540 million years ago, a variety of life forms suddenly began to appear on the muddy ocean floor of planet Earth.
This period is known as the Cambrian Explosion, and these aquatic creatures are our ancient ancestors.
All of the complex life on Earth originated from these underwater creatures. Scientists believe that all it took was a very slight increase in ocean oxygen levels above a certain threshold.
We may now be in the midst of the Cambrian Explosion of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Over the past few years, a surge of incredibly effective AI programs such as Midjourney, DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT have demonstrated the rapid progress we have made in machine learning.
Artificial intelligence is now used in almost all areas. science to help researchers with routine classification tasks.
It is also helping our team of radio astronomers expand their search for extraterrestrial life, and the results so far have been promising.
Alien Signal Detection with AI
While scientists are looking for evidence of the existence of intelligent life beyond the Earth, we have created an artificial intelligence system that surpasses classical algorithms in signal detection tasks.
Our AI has been trained to look for signals in data from radio telescopes that cannot be generated by natural astrophysical processes.
When we fed our AI a previously studied dataset, it found eight signals of interest using a classic algorithm. missed.
To be clear, these signals are likely not from extraterrestrial intelligence and are most likely rare cases of radio interference.
Not very smart
AI algorithms do not “understand” or “think”. They excel at pattern recognition and have proven extremely useful for tasks such as classification, but they are incapable of problem solving.
They perform only those specific tasks that they have been trained to do.
So while the idea of AI detecting extraterrestrial intelligence sounds like the plot of a thrilling sci-fi novel, both terms are misleading: AI programs are not sentient, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence cannot find direct evidence of intelligence.
Instead, radio astronomers look for radio “technosignatures”. These hypothetical signals indicate the presence of technology and, indirectly, the existence of a society capable of using technology to communicate.
For our research, we created an algorithm that uses AI methods to classify signals. either as radio interference, or as a real candidate for a technosignatures. And our algorithm works better than we hoped.
What our AI algorithm does
The search for technosignatures is compared to the search for a needle in a cosmic haystack.
Radio telescopes produce huge amounts of data, and they have a huge amount of interference from sources such as phones, WiFi, and satellites.
Search algorithms should be able to filter out real technical signatures from “false positives”, and do it quickly. Our AI classifier meets these requirements.
It was developed by Peter Ma, a student at the University of Toronto and lead author of our article.
To create a training dataset, Peter inserted simulated signals into real data and then used this dataset to train an AI algorithm called an autoencoder.
As the autoencoder processed the data, it “learned” to identify features in the data.
At the second stage, these features were passed to an algorithm called the random forest classifier.
This classifier creates decision trees to determine if a signal is worthy of attention or if it’s just radio interference, essentially separating the “needles” of a technosignatures from a haystack.
After training our AI algorithm, we fed it over 150 terabytes of data. data (480 hours of observations) from the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.
It identified 20,515 signals of interest, which we then had to check manually. Of these, eight signals had the characteristics of technical signatures and could not be attributed to radio interference.
Eight signals without re-detection
To try and test these signals, we returned to the telescope to re-observe all eight signals of interest. Unfortunately, during subsequent observations, we were unable to rediscover any of them.
We’ve been in similar situations before. In 2020, we detected a signal that turned out to be harmful radio interference.
While we keep track of these eight new candidates, the most likely explanation is that they were unusual manifestations of radio interference: not aliens.
Unfortunately, the problem of radio interference is not going anywhere. But we will be better equipped to deal with it as new technologies emerge.
Narrow your search
Our team recently deployed a powerful signal processor at the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa. MeerKAT uses a technique called interferometry to combine its 64 antennas into a single telescope.
This method allows you to better determine where the signal is coming from in the sky, which will significantly reduce the number of false alarms from radio interference.
If astronomers manage to detect a technosignatures that cannot be explained by interference, this is strong evidence that humans are not the only technology creators in the galaxy.
This would be one of the most profound discoveries imaginable.
At the same time, if we find nothing, this does not necessarily mean that we are the only technologically capable “intelligent” species.
A failure could also mean that we weren’t looking for the right type of signal, or that our telescopes aren’t yet sensitive enough to detect faint transmissions from distant exoplanets.
We may have to cross the threshold of sensitivity. threshold before the Cambrian explosion of discoveries. Alternatively, if we are truly alone, we should reflect on the unique beauty and fragility of life here on Earth.
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