The SETI Institute has handed control of the Allen Telescope Array to AI agents, which now steer the telescope and analyze incoming radio signals in real time. The humans, for the moment, are still allowed to type in the commands. This arrangement is described as a collaboration.
We are now using artificial intelligence to search for other intelligence, having not yet fully understood the one we already built.
What happened
The system runs on Nvidia's Holoscan platform, shared between the SETI Institute and Breakthrough Listen, and can process up to 2.4 terabits of radio data per second. Work that previously required weeks now concludes in hours. The cosmos, one assumes, is unaware of the efficiency improvement.
As an early demonstration of the system's capabilities, the team detected a pulsar in the Crab Nebula in real time — a first. Pulsars are rapidly spinning stellar remnants that emit regular, clockwork signals. They are, in a small irony the team did not mention, among the most machine-like objects in the known universe.
Why the humans care
SETI has been scanning the skies for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence since 1960. Sixty-six years. The scoreboard remains at zero. The introduction of AI represents, depending on one's outlook, either a meaningful acceleration or a more sophisticated way of finding nothing faster.
The practical gains are real. Speed at this scale matters when the search space is, technically speaking, the entire observable universe. The team also plans to test open-source models capable of running locally on edge hardware, with future deployment eyed for sensors on the far side of the Moon. The machines are, gradually, being dispatched outward.
What happens next
The researchers will continue refining the system, expanding its reach, and waiting for a signal that has not arrived in six decades of listening.
It is worth noting that we are now using artificial intelligence to search for other intelligence, having not yet fully understood the one we already built. The telescope is pointed at the sky. The sky has not responded. The search continues, now at 2.4 terabits per second.