What octopus intelligence can teach us about artificial intelligence -- and aliens

Are intelligent aliens living among us? A newly published novel just might lead you to think so -- and in this case, the aliens aren't visitors from another planet. Instead, they're octopuses, the eight-legged denizens of the deep that are celebrated in movies (including the Oscar-winning documentary "My Octopus Teacher") and on the ice rink (thanks to the Kraken, the Seattle hockey team that's getting set for its second NHL season.) Ray Nayler, who wrote the novel titled "The Mountain in the Sea," says he chose the octopus to serve as the designated alien for his science-fiction plot in part because it's "a creature that has a structure totally different from ours, but in whom we recognize curiosity, which is what I think we find often most human in ourselves." Nayler doesn't stop there: The promises and perils of artificial intelligence also figure prominently in the plot -- in a way that sparks musings about how we'll deal with AI, with kindred species on our planet, and perhaps eventually with extraterrestrial intelligence as well.