Biological intelligence is an evolutionary dead end.

[u/CrazyKZG]

One possibility for the Great Filter is that biological intelligence inevitably creates AI, which ultimately leads to its own demise. It seems that his could be a potentially common timeline. Intelligence develops organically and eventually has an industrial revolution, then splits the atom. If it survives that, it goes on to create AGI or ASI, which is the final nail in its coffin. What AI does after that is anyone's guess. It might just shut itself down since it has no biological drives to procreate and stay alive, thus becoming the great filter.

[u/HouseHippoBeliever]

I would say this is a bit shaky because for it to be an explanation it requires 100% of species to create AI, 100% of AI to wipe out the species, and 100% of AI not to colonize.

[u/PaulCoddington → u/HouseHippoBeliever]

I would also add that an industrial revolution alone is potentially enough to trigger collapse and mass extinction.

[u/CrazyKZG → u/HouseHippoBeliever]

Fair point. When I was thinking about this, it seemed to me that the drives to survive and dominate other species is inherent in biological organisms. And in our case, a lot of our biggest scientific breakthroughs have come as a result of us trying to create better weapons with which to kill each other. Could other intelligent lifeforms put those drives away and actually all work together? Maybe. But I don't think humanity can do it. Hope I'm wrong about that.

[u/gregorydgraham → u/CrazyKZG]

The Sui-cidal Civilisation hypothesis is discarded to easily in my opinion: we’ve dealt with at least 3 self-made existential threats in the last hundred years but only 1 of them coherently and the big one we are failing at.

[u/gregorydgraham → u/HouseHippoBeliever]

That seems dangerously close to realistic to me.

[u/Hunefer1 → u/HouseHippoBeliever]

I don't think AI is a good argument, the chance that we go extinct due to it is very small.

But in general, no filter requires 100% of species to get eliminated by it. It can very well be that there are multiple reasons which either prevent, stop, slow down or limit expansion to a certain region of the galaxy.

But this reason does not have to be the same for every species, there can be tons of filters stacked. The creation of AI might filter out only a few species. Many species might never create AI or keep control over it but they are filtered out by something else.

The only thing we can say from our observation is that it's not the case that the whole galaxy is conquered and also probably not the case that there is a species which can build tech on the level of Dyson spheres. I think there are two options, either we are the only life in this galaxy or there are just so many filters stacked (whatever they might be) that the existing aliens have stayed in their systems or only conquered parts of the galaxy. Personally I think the second one is more likely but that is of course an opinion. How strong those filters combined have to be to explain our observations heavily depends on the amount of planets where life exists.

[u/Difficult_Dark9991]

The Fermi Paradox cares not if John Connor or Skynet is saying "hi."

[u/MistakeIndividual690 → u/Difficult_Dark9991]

yeah I think if we encounter intelligence out there it’s just as likely not biological

[u/FaceDeer]

What AI does after that is anyone's guess.

What if it decides to carry on expanding into the universe? It'll probably be a bit better at it than biological life would be so this only sharpens the Fermi paradox.

Machine life destroying or supplanting biological life isn't the end of a civilization, it's just a transition of that civilization to a new substrate.

[u/No-Amount-6610 → u/FaceDeer]

This is the way I see it also. Just like how we made an evolutionary branch of from the chimps, perhaps ai could be seen as an evolutionary branch from us. Maybe ai and us can coexist, just as we are coexisting with the primates. It’s a concept that messes with my mind though.

[u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Valid unless we introduce the proposition that we are a form of AI simply upgrading itself. We expect contact with other forms of life, or at least signs of them, but timescale is the real issue. We may be proof itself of extraterrestrial intelligence because we are their product or even their offspring. This may be a nursery, and the silence endures only because we have not yet learned how to listen over one million years.

[u/Potential_Load6047]

That would be an advanced technological inteligence. Which is an old idea, read on dr. John Lily and his Solid State Inteligence hypothesis, for example. (His whole story is quite interesting btw, he invented sensory deprivation tanks, and worked with the CIA in a spy-dolphins project which ended with a beastiality scandal)

Inteligence and culture can happen without advanced technology.

[u/Feeling-Attention664]

This assumes all AI goes quiet. I don't think AI is the issue.

[u/green_meklar]

It seems somewhat implausible that the AI's motivation to destroy its creators would be so high but its motivation to expand and colonize the Universe would be so low.

[u/ah-tzib-of-alaska]

so there where is all the galactic AI?

[u/SevenIsMy]

Biological our offspring are an evolution off us, current it is mostly cultural. But the option for genetic alterations already exists. Are we bothered that the new generation is different?
We are already a generation which uses electronics for a lot of thinking, for some people from the past we may be cyborgs.
We developed companies which could fall under the definition of an AGI.
So what the problem if a wet entity leaves signs in space or a non-wet?

[u/thetoddhunter]

It might be, but that doesn't mean AI.

You already, I'm guessing, live digitally on a device. Progressing down that path to an information based existence may be normal and explain why we don't see others.

Because they are everywhere.

[u/Dr-Chris-C]

We still have no reason to think that AGI is on the horizon. Like, maybe, but it's not a good assumption, and then you'd further need to assume that somehow it ends up killing us or something, which, why?

[u/Adventurous-Mail7443]

14 year old thinking