NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 1, 2023--

Scientists are hoping to receive a message from aliens imminently, after waiting for 30 years. But the chances are slim: the message was sent to a star that does not appear to have any planets, and there will only be an hour to hear the message. It is 40 years since Japanese astronomers Masaki Morimoto and Hisashi Hirabayashi composed a message intended to show what humans are like and how life works on Earth, and send it into the cosmos. They did so using a telescope at Stanford University and sent a message to Altair, a star 16.7 light years away that could potentially have life around it. Decades on, a team led by Shinya Narusawa at the University of Hyogo will use a large Japanese telescope to try and see if anything is sending back a reply to our message. Astronomers believe that it is conceivable a reply would come around now, given the distance to the star and the time that has elapsed. They will listen for messages coming from the star on 22 August. That date was chosen because of its significance in Japan’s Tanabata star festival, which symbolically celebrates the meeting of two deities Orihime and Hikoboshi, the latter of which is represented by Altair. Narusawa is hopeful that aliens are out there somewhere and that the message could have really been sent towards alien life around the distant star. “A large number of exoplanets have been detected since the 1990s,” he told Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun. “Altair may have a planet whose environment can sustain life.” The original message was sent on 15 August, 1983, as part of a collaboration with a Japanese weekly comic anthology. But the attempt to contact aliens never seemed entirely serious, and so any scientists involved are unlikely to be disappointed. In 2008, when the email was unearthed, Hirabayashi admitted that the pair had been drunk when they came up with the idea of sending the message, according to Gizmodo at the time. “I believe in aliens, but they are very difficult to find,” he said then. He also noted that he had received an array of messages from schoolchildren about the message, which had made sending it worth it. Read More Exact number of people needed for a Mars colony found – and it’s less than you think Strange hidden ‘structures’ hundreds of metres deep discovered on dark side of moon Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashes into moon in failed mission

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One of the pioneers of artificial intelligence has warned the government is not safeguarding against the dangers posed by future super-intelligent machines. Professor Stuart Russell told The Times ministers were favouring a light touch on the burgeoning AI industry, despite warnings from civil servants it could create an existential threat. A former adviser to both Downing Street and the White House, Prof Russell is a co-author of the most widely used AI textbook and lectures on computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He told The Times a system similar to ChatGPT – which has passed exams and can compose prose – could form part of a super-intelligence machine which could not be controlled. “How do you maintain power over entities more powerful than you – forever?” he asked. “If you don’t have an answer, then stop doing the research. It’s as simple as that. “The stakes couldn’t be higher: if we don’t control our own civilisation, we have no say in whether we continue to exist.” In March, he co-signed an open letter with Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak warning of the “out-of-control race” going on at AI labs. The letter warned the labs were developing “ever more powerful digital minds that no one, not even their creators, can understand, predict or reliably control”. Prof Russell has worked for the UN on a system to monitor the nuclear test-ban treaty and was asked to work with the Government earlier this year. “The Foreign Office … talked to a lot of people and they concluded that loss of control was a plausible and extremely high-significance outcome,” he said. “And then the government came out with a regulatory approach that says: ‘Nothing to see here… we’ll welcome the AI industry as if we were talking about making cars or something like that’.” He said making changes to the technical foundations of AI to add necessary safeguards would take “time that we may not have”. “I think we got something wrong right at the beginning, where we were so enthralled by the notion of understanding and creating intelligence, we didn’t think about what that intelligence was going to be for,” he said. We've sort of got the message and we're scrambling around trying to figure out what to do Professor Stuart Russell “Unless its only purpose is to be a benefit to humans, you are actually creating a competitor – and that would be obviously a stupid thing to do. “We don’t want systems that imitate human behaviour… you’re basically training it to have human-like goals and to pursue those goals. “You can only imagine how disastrous it would be to have really capable systems that were pursuing those kinds of goals.” He said there were signs of politicians becoming aware of the risks. “We’ve sort of got the message and we’re scrambling around trying to figure out what to do,” he said. “That’s what it feels like right now.” The government has launched the AI Foundation Model Taskforce which it says will “lay the foundations for the safe use of foundation models across the economy and ensure the UK is at the forefront of this pivotal AI technology”. Read More ChatGPT creators try to use artificial intelligence to explain itself – and come across major problems Artificial intelligence could ‘transform’ heart attack diagnosis, scientists say Hackers aim to find flaws in AI - with White House help ChatGPT user in China detained for creating and spreading fake news, police say Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

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