Ethan Mollick calls a quote about agentic observatories “remarkably ominous”

What happened

Remarkably ominous quote for a very cool project. “As our new agentic observatories reach out into the universe, what they find may have much more in common with themselves than with the humans who created them,” said Andrew Siemion, Bernard M. Oliver chair for SETI... “But this

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The story so far

Ethan Mollick called a quote about the SETI Institute’s agentic AI observatory project “remarkably ominous,” while describing the project itself as “very cool.” His reaction concerned Andrew Siemion’s suggestion that the observatories could encounter something more like themselves than their human creators. “As our new agentic observatories reach out into the universe, what they find may have much more in common with themselves than with the humans who created them,” said Siemion, the Bernard M. Oliver chair for SETI. The statement framed a possibility for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, rather than a finding from the project.