A Harvard professor of astronomy is predicting extraterrestrials will make contact with artificial intelligence before humans, due to aliens potentially feeling a "kinship" with human technology.
"My expectation from interstellar travel is that it's best done with electronic gadgets and devices rather than with biological creatures because the journey takes a long time," Harvard professor Avi Loeb said in an upcoming documentary titled "God Vs. Aliens."
"Even to the nearest star, it will take us 50,000 years to get there with chemical rockets. And artificial intelligence systems have that patience - and then they can remain dormant ... so that they survive the journey," he said.
Space agencies across the world, including NASA and the European Space Agency, have for years been using AI technology to chart galaxies and stars and even send robots to other planets.
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Loeb said extraterrestrials would likely reach out to artificial intelligence before humans due to a likely "kinship."
"If they visit us, of course, we can use our AI systems to interpret their AI systems. And, you know, they might feel a kinship to them," Loeb said.
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Loeb is currently on an expedition in the Pacific Ocean searching for an object that crashed near Papua New Guinea back in 2014. Data show the object originated outside the Earth’s solar system and was recognized by NASA as the first known interstellar meteor to hit Earth.
Loeb notes that the object is tougher than the 272 other meteors in NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies and is working to determine if the object "was a craft from an extraterrestrial civilization," according to Loeb’s journal blog of the expedition.
The Harvard professor told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that he and his team already had "breaking news" from their research: They found a small, magnetic sphere composed mostly of iron, along with magnesium and titanium, but no nickel.
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Loeb explained that this composition is "anomalous compared to human-made alloys, known asteroids and familiar astrophysical sources."
"The fundamental question is obvious: was this first recognized interstellar object from 2014 manufactured by a technological civilization? Upon our return, we could produce an alloy in the laboratory that has the same composition as we infer for the spherules and analyze the resulting material properties," Loeb wrote.
If Loeb and his team make an even bigger discovery on their mission, AI will play a monumental role.
"If we discover a technological gadget at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, then AI will be needed to decipher its purpose and coded," Loeb said.
Loeb’s expedition is celebrated by UK musician and documentarian Mark Lee Christopher, who directed the upcoming "God Vs. Aliens" film.
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"I have a lifelong interest in the UFO and the paranormal, initially inspired by a TV show in the UK called ‘Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World,’" Lee told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. "I’m a qualified scientist myself like Arthur C. Clarke, who invented the communication satellite as well as writer of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ I take that scientific approach to UFOs. This is why I love what Avi Loeb is doing."
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Lee added that he wanted to address "the serious issues" of what would play out if extraterrestrials make contact with Earth, specifically if religions would be torn apart or if humanity would "somehow reach a higher spiritual plane."
"I also think if proof is released that we have been visited then we may need to reinterpret the great religious texts like the Torah and the Bible," he argued.
"God Vs. Aliens" is slated to be released on Amazon July 4 and features experts such as Loeb and former UK Ministry of Defence UFO chief Nick Pope.
"Alien AI may reach out to our AI, which may be good in terms of helping us communicate better or they may bypass us biologically humans altogether," Lee said.
"What is clear is that Ufology is now the domain of serious scientists and no longer the realm of conspiracy tinfoil hat folk," Lee concluded.
