The next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) systems is likely to include a machine more complex than the human brain, since the existing 100 trillion connections of GPT-4 are only a factor of 6 shy of the number of synapses in the human brain. Although the machine will be trained on human-made texts, it will develop its own qualities of mind by learning from new personal experiences. It will likely mature similarly to the way that children become independent adults who take legal responsibility for their actions. Humanity gave birth to an alien baby in its technological belly. Alarm bells are starting to sound about the existential risk that AI may bring as an alien entity.

Why did natural processes on Earth lead to the creation of biological entities with natural intelligence, rather than computer systems with artificial intelligence (AI)? Even though silicon is the eighth most abundant element in the Solar system, waiting for a silicon chip to be made by a random sequence of chemical or geological processes would be equivalent to expecting a cat who happens to be walking on a keyboard to type a literary masterpiece. There is no conceivable random path that would lead to self-replicating computers out of the soup of chemicals on the early Earth. However, as I reviewed in an extensive textbook titled Life in the Cosmos, published in 2021 with my former postdoc, Manasvi Lingam, there is a reasonable path to explaining biology from the same initial conditions. Starting from the building blocks of silicon chips, computer designers and programmers accomplish complex abstract tasks.

Over the past few weeks, team members of the Galileo Project engaged in a truly heroic effort to assemble the first telescope system at Harvard University. The Galileo Project is a scientific search program for extraterrestrial equipment near Earth. The Project was publicly announced one month after the ODNI report to the US Congress about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in June 2021. The Project's name was inspired by Galileo Galilei's legacy of finding answers to fundamental questions, in this case the nature of UAP, by looking through new telescopes. The search is agnostic to the outcome.

"Are we alone in the universe?" is one of humanity's biggest questions. But now, some of the world's top scientists and tech companies are setting out to answer an even bigger question: "Are we being visited?" This used to be seen as a silly topic for debate, confined to conspiratorial subreddits filled with stories of reptilian alien overlords covertly living among us. But things are starting to change. Last year, not only did US president Biden approve a new US government office to study the nature of unidentified flying objects, but a distinguished academic, Professor Avi Loeb -- the longest serving chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy -- launched The Galileo Project, a search for UFOs.

An international group of researchers led by the Harvard astronomer who believes the first interstellar object discovered was a'lightsail' from another civilization have announced a new project to search for signs of'extraterrestrial technological civilizations' (ETCs) in space. Known as the Galileo Project, the researchers - led by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb - will use artificial intelligence and look at data from existing and future astronomical surveys and high-resolution telescopes. The project will have three objectives: to search for unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), other interstellar objects like'Oumuamua and satellites created by ETCs. A new project will search for'extraterrestrial technological civilizations' in space has been announced. Pictured is the famous Tic-Tac footage, which has been previously acknowledged as real by the Navy.