Artificial intelligence could be the key to discovering whether alien life exists, according to Professor Luke O’Neill. 

They might not look like little green men, but many scientists believe there is life in the universe beyond planet Earth. 

People have tried to prove the existence of extraterrestrial life for decades – but AI might be the key to finally proving it exists. 

Prof O’Neill told Show Me the Science the ‘Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence’ is an ongoing American project searching for alien life using radio waves. 

“The idea here is that if there is intelligent life out there, it would have emitted radio, and those radio signals should be detectable,” he said. 

“It's been going on for a long time trying to detect radio waves from space, and guess what? They found nothing. 

“They haven't detected any radio waves yet, but they've souped up the effort, and there are now 28 large antennae trying to pick up these radio waves. 

“But more importantly, they're using artificial intelligence to analyse the data.” 

Aliens and AI

AI can analyse the data collected through radio waves at two terabytes per second. 

It might not be any better at searching for aliens, but it will work far faster at analysing data compared to older computers, speeding up the search process. 

“The scope is massive, the bandwidth is increased,” Prof O’Neill said. 

“They were trying to detect radio waves at a certain frequency and that's now widened massively because of this. 

“They’re scanning the universe – at least 100 galaxies, a trillion stars worth of information to see if they can detect radio waves or optical signatures that would be indicative of intelligent life.” 

Only a few days ago, according to Prof O’Neill, eight potential signs of alien life were detected – and the AI will be able to quickly figure out what it is. 

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