If experts become successful in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), we may require the use of artificial intelligence in understanding what they are saying and even talk back to them.
Challenges of Alien Language Structure
In popular culture, aliens are depicted as English-speaking entities, or creatures who can become instantly understandable with the use of a universal translator. In reality, this task may not be so easy.
There are possible problems that must be considered. First, any potential aliens we may encounter will not be speaking a human language. Second, we lack knowledge about their culture or sociology that makes it difficult for us to understand the relevance of their language to their cultural standard.
For decades, scientists have considered the possibility of receiving recognizable mathematical information from aliens, although it is not the only possible message that we might receive. There are other signals that might be more sophisticated in their design as the aliens try to convey more complicated concepts. This poses the third problem that alien language could be orders of magnitude more complex than human communication.
A complicated signal or message does not mean that the aliens will talk about complex matters. Rather, it refers to the complexity of the structure of their language, which experts refer to as "information theory". This was developed by cryptographer and mathematician Claude Shannon who worked in the Bell Laboratories in the late 1940s.
Information theory is an approach of distilling the information of any given communication . Shannon believed that any kind of information transfer - whether it is human language, chemical reactions of plants to attract insects, or data transmission down a fiber optic cable - can be broken down into discrete units or bits.
These units are like the 'quanta' of communication, like the letter of the alphabet, or a dolphin's repertoire of whistles.
In language, these bits cannot just go randomly because it should follow syntax which describes the grammatical rules that dictate how the bits can be ordered. By knowing the rules or syntax, we can predict the missing words that can complete a sentence with the use of "Shannon entropy". Alien communication could have a higher Shannon entropy than human language, and if it does, it could make their language too difficult for humans to understand.
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AI to the Rescue
At this point, we might need the help of artificial intelligence. AI is already being put to the test trying to decode communication from a non-human species. This is based on a study conducted by a team of researchers where AI is used in trying to decode dolphin communication. If it passes that test, then maybe it will also be ready to deal with alien messages in the future.
AI would begin by analyzing a real message embedded within a SETI signal. If the extraterrestrial communication is more complex in structure and syntax than human languages, then it tells us that their species is older than our own.
Alien messages might take many light years to travel, even longer for two-way communication. Whatever information we have about them will be condensed into their original transmission. As described by astrophysicist Eamonn Kerins from the Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, aliens might send something mathematical just as a signal to us that they are there and we are not alone. If ever they send a message that is more complex, hopefully they will pack it with information to give humans and AI the best chance of at least assessing some of it.
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