Making a self-replicating probe to litter the galaxy seems like a pretty piss-poor thing to do to any interstellar neighbors. Ideally, those probes would have to do something other than make more probes.
Ideally, those probes would send information back here.
And once we ascribe a goal to the probes, all of the problems come back. Information from 4 light years away will take 4 years to reach here at best. From further, longer. What good is information that 3 centuries ago, there was a civilization on planet X?
> What good is information that 3 centuries ago, there was a civilization on planet X?
People go out of their way to try and uncover ancient and forgotten civilizations here on Earth already.
If we have strong AI, the probe itself will be smart enough to chat with the locals in realtime. Any local AIs might send a probe on their own and have a century-long nap here to wait for a response. If our AIs are based on some sort of mind-uploading tech (probably unlikely, but who knows) then arguably, there is no wait- if you want to go, just upload yourself to the probe and go to sleep. Upload a thousand copies to a thousand ships.
We don't even really know what "strong AI" is. We have a kind of fuzzy "we'll know it when we see it" definition. We don't even know how we think.
And why is the probe smart enough to chat with the locals in real time? And that's not really the problem. It's not communicating with the locals: it's communicating with us. And then that information being of some actual use.
We are not investigating random rocks on Mars. We are exploring the possibility of moving there. If it can be made hospitable. Part of that is knowing rather dull stuff, like is there water, is it liquid, is the soil poisonous to plant life, etc.
Performing billion dollar archaeology with no actual return is not something that's going to go far. I'm sorry to say. At some point, you have to dedicate some resources to taking care of the population of the planet you are on.
> If our AIs are based on some sort of mind-uploading tech
Or how about we just instantaneously beam there since we can just pretend whatever limitations we know we currently have won't exist in the future.
I don't have a problem with speculating where technology may lead. However, that speculation needs to be grounded in reality. When we sent a man to the moon, we weren't waiting for something fanciful to be created. No, we took what currently existed and expanded upon that.
What good (in practical terms) is information that an hour ago, a rock on Mars looked like this? It's of no practical value. In terms of learning about the universe, however, it's great.
Learning that there was a contemporary civilization within 300 light years of here would be even more revolutionary in terms of knowledge about the universe.
If that news broke today, it would be the most significant discovery in history, probably a major turning point for our entire civilization. I don't understand how that could be perceived as useless information.
Making a self-replicating probe to litter the galaxy seems like a pretty piss-poor thing to do to any interstellar neighbors. Ideally, those probes would have to do something other than make more probes.
Ideally, those probes would send information back here.
And once we ascribe a goal to the probes, all of the problems come back. Information from 4 light years away will take 4 years to reach here at best. From further, longer. What good is information that 3 centuries ago, there was a civilization on planet X?