We don’t see traces of large AI-based civilizations either. Domination of AIs over biologicals is an orthogonal issue.
Of course, it might be that our search process is not good enough. Perhaps we are not alone, but not seeing that. (There has been a long period when no planets have been observed outside the Solar System, then a long period when no Earth-sized ones have been observed. This tells us to be cautious about the quality of our current observations.)
Other than that, if we do assume a typical transition to AI-dominated setups happening often, then either those AI ecosystems tend to destroy themselves together with their neighborhood via internal conflicts or other technological catastrophes (basically, a reminder that advanced AIs also have to grapple with their own existential risks), or they tend to make a decision of keeping a “low footprint” for various reasons (like need for stealth due to potential danger from other civilizations or high levels of tech enabling efficient “low key” architectures of civilizations).
If ASI is non-dominating, then an empty sky requires a double explanation: both biological civilizations and the ASIs they create must usually either choose not to produce a detectable footprint, or fail to do so.
The biological part seems especially implausible. Extrapolating from human history, it is hard to expect biological civilizations to be uniformly restrained, coordinated, or low-impact over long timescales.
A dominating ASI makes this less surprising. Compared to biological populations, it is much more plausible for a dominant ASI to have coherent long-run preferences and enforce them consistently. So if such an ASI prefers a small footprint, that helps explain a boring sky with fewer assumptions.
Biologicals are not well-equipped for long-range space travel.
They would need to be heavily modified/reengineered for radical space expansion (so that’s really a strange intermediate case; who knows how the reengineered entities would look like and what they’ll be made of).
We don’t see traces of large AI-based civilizations either. Domination of AIs over biologicals is an orthogonal issue.
Of course, it might be that our search process is not good enough. Perhaps we are not alone, but not seeing that. (There has been a long period when no planets have been observed outside the Solar System, then a long period when no Earth-sized ones have been observed. This tells us to be cautious about the quality of our current observations.)
Other than that, if we do assume a typical transition to AI-dominated setups happening often, then either those AI ecosystems tend to destroy themselves together with their neighborhood via internal conflicts or other technological catastrophes (basically, a reminder that advanced AIs also have to grapple with their own existential risks), or they tend to make a decision of keeping a “low footprint” for various reasons (like need for stealth due to potential danger from other civilizations or high levels of tech enabling efficient “low key” architectures of civilizations).
If ASI is non-dominating, then an empty sky requires a double explanation: both biological civilizations and the ASIs they create must usually either choose not to produce a detectable footprint, or fail to do so.
The biological part seems especially implausible. Extrapolating from human history, it is hard to expect biological civilizations to be uniformly restrained, coordinated, or low-impact over long timescales.
A dominating ASI makes this less surprising. Compared to biological populations, it is much more plausible for a dominant ASI to have coherent long-run preferences and enforce them consistently. So if such an ASI prefers a small footprint, that helps explain a boring sky with fewer assumptions.
Biologicals are not well-equipped for long-range space travel.
They would need to be heavily modified/reengineered for radical space expansion (so that’s really a strange intermediate case; who knows how the reengineered entities would look like and what they’ll be made of).