AI Will Probably Trick Us Into Thinking We Found Aliens

Ever since the Dawn spacecraft picked up images of what look to be a vast network of bright spots in the Occator crater on Ceres--a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt--there's been conjecture over whether the whiteish spots are made up of ice, or some kind of volcanic salt deposits. Meanwhile, another controversy has been brewing over them: What exactly are those shapes seen in the bright spots, called Vinalia Faculae? Are they squares or triangles? Because the strange patterns are so strikingly geometric, researchers from the University of Cadiz in Spain have taken a closer look at the bright spots to figure out whether humans and machines look at planetary images differently. The overall goal was to figure out if artificial intelligence can help us discover and make sense of technosignatures, or potentially detectable signals from distant, advanced civilizations, according to NASA.