This gold‑anodized aluminum plaque was attached to Pioneer 10 before its March 2, 1972 launch. Designed by Carl and Linda Sagan and Frank Drake, the plaque was intended to convey messages to extraterrestrial beings. (Note: The full plaque is not shown here.) NASA/Getty Images

SETI’s senior astronomer Seth Shostak argues that humanity must be ready not only to encounter alien life but also their artificial intelligences. He points to our rapid development of AI, cloud computing, and robotic explorers as evidence that an alien civilization could build comparable systems.

Communicating with a sentient alien is already a formidable challenge. The question becomes even more complex when the recipient is a machine. While the math we use to encode signals might feel universal to us, it can appear arbitrary to an extraterrestrial mind—organic or synthetic. For instance, our conventions around bits, bytes, and kilobytes are engineering choices, not universal constants.

Shostak believes that alien machines will treat our transmissions the way we parse unfamiliar languages. By detecting patterns, repetitions, and redundancies, they can recognize that a signal is deliberate and intelligent.

He further suggests that sending large volumes of data could actually aid comprehension. Rather than relying on abstract mathematical proofs of intelligence, a data‑rich transmission allows an alien machine to build a lexicon: associate “four‑wheel vehicle” with “automobile,” for example, and then infer verbs from contextual sequences.

Shostak uses the analogy of the Library of Congress: if an alien probe scanned the digital collection, it would quickly learn nouns and their associated images. Understanding action words would be harder, but the machine could still deduce patterns, much like we learn to read.

While our radio broadcasts and laser beams have limited reach, and probes like Pioneer and Voyager degrade over centuries, the mere discovery of such artifacts could still offer valuable insights into our technological culture.

Shostak likens the scenario to a hypothetical Santa Maria washing ashore. Native Americans could examine the ship’s metal, cloth, and rudder, deducing the level of technical sophistication that produced it, even without direct communication.

Each of the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 carries a 12‑inch gold‑plated phonograph record featuring images and sounds from Earth. NASA.

According to Shostak, alien encounters with probes are unlikely, but the technology itself will intrigue extraterrestrial machines far more than the symbolic plaques. Equipping probes with abundant data and letting alien AI decipher the rest is the recommended approach for first contact.

In essence, as long as we maintain consistent communication protocols and provide ample data, alien machines should be able to recognize and interpret our messages. The time and effort they invest will depend on their priorities and the limits of their programming, but the first contact will likely leave an indelible impression on both sides.