David Kipping

Yeah.

I guess like a Turing test problem, like if it's

displaying all those properties, if it quacks like a parrot, looks like a parrot, or quacks like a duck, isn't it basically a duck at that point?

So yeah, I can see that argument.

It probably...

I mean, certainly I try to think about it from the observer's point of view as an astronomer.

What am I looking for?

Whether that intelligence is conscious or not has little bearing, I think, as to what I should be looking for when I'm trying to detect evidence of them.

It would maybe affect their behavior in ways that I can't predict.

But that's, again, getting into the game of what I would call xenopsychology of trying to make projections about the motivations of an alien species is incredibly difficult.

And similarly, for any kind of artificial intelligence, it's unfathomable what its intentions may be.

I mean, I would sort of question whether it would even be interested in traveling between the stars at all.

If its primary goal is computation, computation for the sake of computation, then it's probably going to have a different

It's going to be engineering its solar system and the nearby material around it for a different goal if it's just simply trying to increase computer substrate across the universe.

If that is its principal intention, to just essentially convert dumb matter into smart matter as it goes, then I think that would come into conflict with our observations of the universe.

Because

the Earth shouldn't be here if that were true.

The Earth should have been transformed into computer substrate by this point.

There has been plenty of time in the history of the galaxy for that to have happened.

So I'm skeptical in the part that that's a behavior that AI or any civilization really engages in, but I also find it difficult to find a way out of it.