An international team of researchers searching for intelligent life in space has discovered eight promising radio signals in data collected at a U.S. observatory using artificial intelligence (AI).
The study, published on January 30 in the journal Nature Astronomy, does not claim to have discovered proof of intelligent aliens; a brief follow-up search for the signals detected in the study yielded nothing. However, the study’s authors believe that using artificial intelligence to search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a promising approach.
The signals were discovered in radio data collected by the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. The data was collected by the telescope as part of the Breakthrough Listen initiative. Scientists had missed the preliminary signals in previous analyses of the data.
They hope that their new algorithm will speed up the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. It can detect potential signals in data that other methods may have overlooked. In fact, after examining 820 initial stars, it has discovered 8 potential signals of interest.
In reality, these eight new signals were most likely created by human technology. Because AI algorithms do not “understand” or “think,” this is the case. They excel at pattern recognition and have proven extremely useful for tasks such as classification, but they lack problem-solving abilities. They only perform the tasks for which they were trained.
The team’s use of AI and techniques to unearth rare and interesting signals previously buried in the noise of human-generated radio frequency interference, such as mobile phones and GPS.
The sources for this piece include an article in Phys.org.
