TheoryAI / non-biological intelligence hypothesis AI-NHI

Avi Loeb, the Harvard astrophysicist (former chair of the Astronomy Department, 2011–2020; founder of the Galileo Project in 2021), has been the most visible academic proponent of this frame. His 2018 paper with Shmuel Bialy (Astrophysical Journal Letters) proposing that the interstellar object 1I/’Oumuamua could be artificial in origin, and his subsequent Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth (2021), advanced the position that the more probable visitor in an interstellar setting is not a biological crew on a generation ship but a small, durable, autonomous probe. The Galileo Project, headquartered at the Center for Astrophysics, deploys instrumented observatories for systematic UAP study under this frame.

Adjacent positions have been advanced within the U.S. UAP-disclosure community — Lue Elizondo, Chris Mellon, and the To The Stars Academy-adjacent researchers have on multiple occasions said that the most likely model for what they describe is autonomous or semi-autonomous probe technology rather than crewed craft. Susan Schneider (Artificial You, 2019) has explored the philosophical consequences of post-biological intelligence as the dominant form of civilization in a mature galaxy.

What the AI-NHI hypothesis predicts: visitors will be small, hardened, and durable rather than large and crew-supporting. They will exhibit behavior consistent with observation and information collection rather than physical interaction. Their decision cycles may be slow relative to human time (a long-lived probe has no reason to act quickly) or very fast (an AI-piloted probe has no biological constraint). They will be present in the solar system in greater numbers than crewed-ship models would predict, and a fraction will be detectable in Lagrange points, in trans-Neptunian space, and on long-period cometary orbits.

Where the AI-NHI hypothesis differs from neighbors: from the standard ETH in not requiring biological occupants; from the time-traveler hypothesis in retaining present-day extraterrestrial origin; from the simulation hypothesis in retaining ordinary physical ontology; from the ancient-astronaut hypothesis in not requiring deep-time contact. The hypothesis is the contemporary academic-respectable version of the ETH, and the one that the Galileo Project and Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative have built observational programs around.