Today’s infants constitute the first generation of humans who will live their entire life under the shadow of artificial intelligence (AI). Content on digital screens might always surpass their cognitive capabilities because by the time they are ten years old, AI will be more capable than humans on most cognitive tasks.
Centuries ago, religions placed humans as inferior beings under the supremacy of God. This delivered a sense of humility to our existential status until the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche declared in 1882 that “God is dead”. The subsequent 143 years until now were characterized by the hubris of modern science and technology, enabling humans to shape nature in unimaginable ways, including the controlled release of nuclear energy and the ability to reach destinations throughout the Solar system and out to a hundred times the Earth-Sun separation. Billions of years from now, our Voyager spacecraft will reach the opposite side of the Milky-Way galaxy and pass tens of billions of stars along its journey.
But in an ironic development, akin to the storyline of “deus ex machina,” it appears likely that within a decade from now AI systems will become the analog of the Oracle of Delphi, capable of delivering insights of superhuman God-like abilities. This will likely bring back to human existence a sense of awe and admiration for a superhuman entity.
What does this upcoming development entail for human-human interactions, education, mental health, life goals, professional skills, national security and economics? How would today’s infants view previous generations that witnessed the use of punch cards in ancient computer technology half a century ago? We do not know. But at any event, the upcoming developments may well define the generation of today’s infants as “Generation AI”.
Given the exponential rise in AI technologies, extrapolating beyond a few decades into our future would be presumptuous. But irrespective of the details, one thing is clear: the impact of AI on society would be shocking.
Interestingly, there is an opportunity to get a glimpse at our long-term future by encountering aliens who evolved by now beyond their own Generation AI on their exoplanet before they engaged in interstellar travel and arrived at Earth. In that case, our guests might display a hybrid of natural and artificial intelligence.
Is it possible that such a visit had already occurred in the 4.54 billion years of Earth’s existence? This thought came to my mind as I was reading the Passover Haggadah with my family and Harvard colleagues last night. Is it possible that ancient Egyptians received tech support from interstellar visitors in constructing the Pyramids? Was the Red Sea miracle mediated by extraterrestrial technology? Were the Ten Commandments written on digital tablets? Did the Ark of the Covenant carry a communication device with extraterrestrial visitors? We must keep in mind that the abilities of a more advanced technological civilization could appear miraculous and God-like in the same way that a GPS system would have saved the Israelites 40 years as Moses navigated inefficiently from Egypt to the Promised Land. To substantiate the possibilities of past visits, scientists must discover material evidence for advanced technologies in archaeological sites.
During the reading of the Haggadah, I noticed several numerical mistakes. The text states that the Israelites multiplied in Egypt and became as numerous as the stars in the sky. However, the total number of all humans who ever lived on Earth — mostly in recent centuries, is comparable to the total number of stars in the Milky-Way galaxy and there are a hundred billion galaxies like it in the observable Universe. In addition, current data on the cosmic microwave background disputes the narrative that the Universe was created in six days. As far as we know, the Sun and the Earth formed in the last third of cosmic history and their entire cosmic construction project took 13.8 billion years, nearly a trillion times longer than 6 days. Following the fortunate circumstances of Exodus, Jews were identified in traditional texts as the chosen people. However, if highly intelligent siblings reside on exoplanets — did they receive even more attention from God? Alternatively, did their visit to Earth inspire historical notions of God?
Realizing that Earth was visited by guests with AI abilities would unify science and religion and bring us back to a proper sense of cosmic awe and modesty. It would be particularly fitting for Generation AI to make the discovery of alien intelligence (also abbreviated as AI) as we all grasp with existential questions about where humanity is heading.
Most stars formed billions of years before the Sun. A statistical sense of the diverse set of post AI Generations on exoplanets in the past billions of years could provide a menu of options for our own future. With the benefits of this cosmic perspective, our own Generation AI can shape a bold vision for humanity in the billions of years to come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
