Articles 1 and 2 detailing the "inevitability" of the creation of AI as intelligent as a human, and how quickly such AI will outpace us due to exponential advancement and achieve superintelligence levels and will basically be a like a created god that will either fundamentally change the human race or lead to extinction.
Multiplying bacteria is also exponential. One bacteria in some few weeks could achieve mass of entire planet. Scary! Except... it
somehow does not happen.
This is how convincing I see this whole "expotential advancement of AI" crap so lovely spouted by various transhumanist groups that really should know better.
The odds of there being other sentient lifeforms in the universe: Pretty close to 100%
The odds of humanity ever making contact with them*: Pretty damn close to 0%
*assuming that FTL travel/communication is impractical.
You do not need FTL. You can spread around entire galaxy with speed << c in hundred milions of years. Considering galaxy is almost as old as universe - about 13 bilion years - this is a lot of time to be literally everywhere. So Fermi Paradox still stand. Why they aren't here?
My personal idea is variant of zoo hypothesis. We are in area that fulfills two conditions:
1. "Owner" of this space is pretty anal about respecting borders of his ownership.
2. "Owner" does not care very much for maintaining at least some parts of owned territory. And by "maintaining" I mean periodical genocide of anything that could potentially or actually be intelligent.
So owner will not interfere (at least not yet) and others will not dare to enter. And here we are.