Making AI Headlines · Page 3
Telescope Hires AI to Search the Sky, Still Waits for an Alien to Respond
· New York time
The SETI Institute and Breakthrough Listen are using AI agents at the Allen Telescope Array to control the telescope and analyze incoming radio signals. The team says tasks that previously took weeks can now be completed in hours, and that the system detected a pulsar in the Crab Nebula in real time for the first time. The project applies automation to a scientific job with a particularly large inbox. A telescope receives a stream of signals, and researchers must decide what to examine and how to direct their instruments. Agents that can help operate the array and analyze the data may let the team respond more quickly to what the equipment sees. The reported pulsar detection is a concrete result, though a pulsar is not a message from extraterrestrial intelligence. It demonstrates a way to process and recognize a known kind of cosmic signal while searching a sky that offers plenty of other noise. The arrangement is a reversal of the usual AI sales pitch. Instead of promising to answer every question, the software helps researchers listen more carefully for one of the largest questions of all. If another civilization eventually calls, the telescope may be ready to notice. Whether it can persuade the caller to sit through a product demonstration is another matter.
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