AI assisted deep space travel

Trine

There was a Horizon episode on the BBC late last night about Artificial Intelligence which I found interesting.

I think it's fair to say that development in this field, along with continued miniturisation and nanotechnology, will see a blurring between what is man and what is machine.

I don't believe we will ever fully create an artificial intelligence, housed in a replicant humanoid body, that would fool a genuine biological human...but I do believe that humans will rely more and more on technology and augmentations that are controlled by AI, particularly in terms of health and longevity of life. Half man, half machine...maybe even more machine in some cases.

And if, as I am beginning to believe, this eventually leads to an immortality of sorts, where time has no bearing on your life expectancy due to the body being maintained indefinitely by machine...wouldn't this make the whole universe our back garden?

A destination that would take hundreds of years to travel to presently would seem reachable, because we would have no concerns about the time-limit on our own existence. Who cares if it takes 50,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri, that would seem like a moment in time to an immortal!

I think the idea of exploring and colonising other worlds through "seed" ships is ridiculous; hundreds of people, expected to breed over the course of centuries, so that the great great great great great great grandson of the original crew will finally see their intergalactic destination. Doomed to failure in my book! Forgetting for a moment the moral concerns of condemning future generations to life aboard a cramped spacecraft with a single unalterable destination, the sheer size and scale of such an endevour makes it difficult to believe possible.

If we are ever to travel outside our solar system, or to new galaxies, it will surely be made with an AI at the helm, or maybe a heavily augmented human. I think we are closer to exploring our galaxy through this means than we are of building a modern day space-faring Noah's Ark, or stumbling upon fantastical wormholes that allow us to pop up in other parts of the universe.

I'm sure many of us here would be the first to volunteer ourselves for a manned mission to Mars, even if it meant assured death, a one way ticket. I wonder how many of us would agree to exploring the galaxy for thousands of years implanted into a mechanical craft? Imagine a simple craft, not much more advanced than current space shuttles, manned by a human brain, preserved forever within a vat providing essential nutrients and neuron regeneration, transplanted into the ships navigational computer using electronic sensors. A ship that can travel endlessly through the galaxy, maybe carrying with it frozen human cells, ready for incubation on arrival at the destination, all the time being overseen by the "brain" of the machine. Actually seems a lot more realistic to me than seed ships and worm holes! And that "craft" will essentially be a human...the body may be completely different, but at the core it will be a living human consciousness.

Could all be crazy talk of course, but I find it an interesting thought. Any ideas?