How AI is helping us search the universe for alien technosignatures | Space

In July, some of the world’s leading astronomers and planetary scientists who specialize in the search for technological intelligence elsewhere in the cosmos gathered to discuss their work at the University of Oxford’s physics department.

They were attending this year’s annual Breakthrough Discuss conference — a meeting of the minds to unravel how artificial intelligence, astrobiology and space missions may one day come to redefine our understanding of life and humanity’s relationship to the cosmos.

“This was the first time we had the Breakthrough Discuss conference outside the U.S. It speaks to how techno-signature science is becoming more universally accepted across universities. It’s now a part of mainstream astrophysics,” Vishal Gajjar, search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) investigator and project scientist for Breakthrough Listen’s international collaboration, told Space.com.

The conference is associated with other “Breakthrough” initiatives, including the Breakthrough Listen Project, which is a 100 million dollar program that will use some of the world’s most advanced telescopes to search about one million nearby star systems for signs of technologically advanced civilizations. Another initiative, Breakthrough Watch, is aiming to characterize a number of Earth-size rocky planets within 20 light-years of Earth to accomplish the same goal of finding life…