Alien AGI’s? The Fermi Paradox revisited

The Fermi Paradox poses a haunting question: with 20 billion Sun-like stars in the Milky Way—many capable of hosting Earth-like planets with intelligent life—why haven't we encountered any extraterrestrial civilizations?

Given that numerous stars are billions of years older than our Sun, statistically, Earth should have been visited by now. The eerie silence suggests two unsettling possibilities: either we're truly alone in the galaxy, or every intelligent civilization inevitably encounters the Great Filter—a catastrophic barrier that prevents them from advancing further.

The Great Filter could be a doom cycle where a civilization's own technological advancements lead to its annihilation. Originally proposed by Robin Hanson in 1998, this concept often imagined world-ending technologies as atomic in nature. Today, it's plausible that alien civilizations might have created an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that ultimately destroyed them and couldn't sustain itself independently.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom, an expert on existential AI risk, warns us: “We humans are like small children playing with a bomb. Superintelligence is a challenge for which we are not ready now and will not be ready for a long time.”

As we stand on the brink of developing our own AGI, we must ask ourselves: Will we meet the same fate? Our future with AGI may be inextricably linked to the Fermi Paradox—either as a testament to our survival or as evidence of the Great Filter at work.