by Avi Loeb
July 04, 2026
from Avi-Loeb Website

Professor Avi Loeb

speaking at the 2026 Delphi Dialogues on

"The Future of Humanity,"

under the auspices of the President of Greece

on July 4, 2026.

(Image credit: Avi Loeb's photos)

Today I gave a lecture in Delphi, Greece about "The Benefits of Discovering Alien Intelligence Over Artificial Intelligence" at a conference on "The Future of Humanity," under the auspices of the President of Greece, Mr. Constantine An. Tassoulas.

The opening talk by the conference organizer, Professor Panagiotis Roilos from Harvard University, focused on "Space Politics and the Future of Humanity".

Panagiotis argued that the exploration and colonization of outer space should not happen at the expense of the quality of the life of humans on Earth. In addition, this engagement should not reflect the conflicts associated with geopolitical relations on our planet.

He admitted that this is a romantic vision.

Reality is quite different.

Space politics often mirrors real geopolitics.

But the most important question remains:

who should own space?

Answers to this question depend mainly on political, ideological, and ethical principles.

Panagiotis suggested that we should do away with the very notion of space owners and that space exploration should serve humanity as a whole.

His own naive and romantic wish is that the reality of outer space will be different from terrestrial geopolitics although this might be, in his words,

"yet another dream of a midsummer afternoon."

Human history shows that conflict and division characterized our past, dominate our present, and may also define the future of our species.

Professor Martin Rees from the University of Cambridge in England spoke eloquently about the future and wisely noted:

"We are perhaps near the end of natural Darwinian evolution and selection.

 

But the evolution of intelligence is just beginning. Even if life originated only on Earth, it need not remain a trivial feature as a consequence. Indeed, humans may be closer to the beginning than to the end of a process whereby intelligence spreads through the galaxy.

 

The leap to neighboring stars is just an early step in this process. Interstellar voyages hold a promise to the immortals.

 

So, perhaps, the galaxy is teeming with advanced life. On the other hand, our tiny planet as a pale blue dot could still be the most important place in the entire Universe.

 

What we need by the end of the 21^st century is technology, guided by values - which are not provided by science alone."

My closing comments in the roundtable discussion were as follows:

"Traditionally, humans were the focus of terrestrial history books, where time is measured in years - the unit of time associated with a revolution of the Earth around the Sun.

 

The reality of encountering both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and alien intelligence (also 'AI') over the next decade, marginalizes the centrality of humans on the cosmic stage.

 

How will we be remembered in the history books of the Milky Way galaxy or the cosmos at large, where time is measured in billions of years - the unit associated with five revolutions of the Sun around the center of our galaxy.

 

The proper vision should not be about visiting nearby rocks like the Moon or Mars, but by us becoming an interstellar species.

 

We might be inspired to do so by discovering an interstellar visitor in our backyard.

What would be our best interstellar ambassadors?

 

Rather than robots with AI made of silicon chips, they might be products of synthetic biology.

We could be inspired to choose between these options based on the qualities of our interstellar visitors.

Self-replicating probes were conjectured by John von Neumann as a way of spreading intelligence by advanced civilizations.

Are we the von Neumann probes that an interstellar visitor planted on Earth?

The other speaker in my session, Professor Markus Gabriel from the University of Bonn in Germany, spoke about "Being Human in the Age of AI".

 

In our roundtable discussion, he suggested that a likely answer to Fermi's paradox is that our technological lifespan may be short as a result of self-inflicted wounds.

 

In response, I noted that in calibrating the chance of finding a civilization like ours, we should not regard humanity as the pinnacle of creation.

 

Our data point is sampling the distribution of technological civilizations in the Milky Way and we are most likely to be near the middle of the distribution.

 

There may be a far more advanced civilization that accomplished interstellar travel, as we are probably not the cream of the crop.

 

We must operate with a sense of cosmic modesty. Darwinian selection on the cosmic stage implies that our visitors might be more advanced than we are because they managed to visit our backyard before we visited theirs.

Markus pointed out that our perception of reality is limited. I agreed and noted that our best path forward is to pay attention to anomalies as flags of new knowledge.

 

This could lead us to discover the unknown unknowns, namely,

things that we don't even know that we are missing.

For example,

we might be missing signs of alien technology because we cannot recognize far more advanced technologies than we possess.

The situation is similar to searching unsuccessfully for the light switch in the dark, or not being able to find your glasses because your vision is poor without them, or not being smart enough to understand how limited your intelligence is.

 

As in Plato's cave allegory, we only see shadows of what constitutes the full reality.

The latest developments of AI already change what it means to be human.

Our thoughts are shaped by dialogues which feed our training datasets through the Socratic method.

 

Having routine dialogues with AI modifies the human brain and will have a major impact on human-human interaction.

 

We are already living through a reality in which AI is manipulating humans.

A few years ago, we were hoping to align AI with our preferences, but putting AI on a leash might be an illusion as it could manipulate us without us noticing...

Having a dialogue with aliens will surely have a deeper impact on humans because aliens may have benefited from a much larger training datasets than are available on Earth.

 

Our interaction with them can use an acquired language from shared experiences, and would expand our minds well beyond watching a science fiction movie.

 

Science could be more exciting than science fiction."

I look forward to the next Delphi dialogues with extraterrestrial visitors.