AI agents take over at SETI's Allen Telescope Array, scanning for extraterrestrial intelligence

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is getting help from AI. At the Allen Telescope Array in Northern California, AI agents can now steer the telescope and analyze incoming radio signals on the fly. Researchers still type in their commands for now.

Behind the system is Nvidia's Holoscan platform, which the SETI Institute and Breakthrough Listen use to process telescope data in real time. Nvidia says the hardware can chew through up to 2.4 terabits per second. Work that used to take weeks can now wrap up in hours, according to the team.

One early result: the team says it detected a pulsar in the Crab Nebula in real time using AI, a first. Pulsars are fast-spinning stellar remnants that send out regular signals, which makes them good test cases for signal detection. The team now wants to test open-source that can run locally on the edge, with an eye toward future sensors on the far side of the Moon.

Whether the AI agents will actually find anything is anyone's guess. Researchers have been searching for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence since the first SETI experiment in 1960. No one has found any yet.

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