{"id":684,"date":"2026-03-14T19:14:56","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T09:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/?p=684"},"modified":"2026-03-14T19:38:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T09:38:48","slug":"on-protocols-for-activities-following-discovery-of-an-eti-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/2026\/03\/14\/on-protocols-for-activities-following-discovery-of-an-eti-probe\/","title":{"rendered":"On Protocols for Activities Following Discovery of an ETI Probe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Current SETI efforts, with rare exceptions, concentrate on the detection of signals from ETI from deep space, and the response protocols adopted for success in this search reflect this concentration. The protocols in question can be found at the IAA site as<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/iaaspace.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/iaa\/Scientific%20Activity\/setideclaration.pdf\">Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/iaaspace.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/iaa\/Scientific%20Activity\/setidraft.pdf\">Draft Declaration of Principles Concerning the Sending of Communications With Extraterrestrial Intelligence<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Nevertheless, there are good reasons, increasingly accepted by researchers, to believe that the first incontrovertible evidence of an ETI could well occur with the discovery of an alien probe already in the Solar System. Such a discovery would present us with a situation different in very significant ways from the case of a signal detection. For example: communication with the alien probe, should it be possible, would be in near real-time; the mere existence of the probe would strongly suggest that our own existence was already known to the ETI who sent the probe; and the artifact itself \u2013 if not the ETIs \u2013 would be physically accessible to humans even at our present level of competence in space.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Clearly, this would call for a very different set of response protocols from those recommended for a signal detection, yet there has been very little in the way of preparation of such a protocol. We have seen an early effort by A Tough (1998,<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ieti.org\/tough\/articles\/jbis51.pdf\">Small Smart Interstellar Probes<\/a>, <span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>JBIS<\/em> <strong>51<\/strong>: 167-74) and a more recent one by A Loeb (2021, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/lweb.cfa.harvard.edu\/~loeb\/Protocol.pdf\">Protocol for Contact with Extraterrestrial Equipment<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">,) but beyond that there has been no effort at a formal draft and the topic is still at the level of general discussion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This is possibly a good thing, because I think there are some aspects of the situation that are highly relevant to the form that such protocols should take that have not been properly considered.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><u>Recursive Strategizing<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We should expect that the ETI that sent the probe out has developed a strategy to advance its interests in having sent the probe out. A part of the development of that strategy would be to anticipate the responses of any intelligences that it might encounter. It would expect that those intelligences would have developed strategies for responding to such an encounter, and that they would expect the probe to have taken that into account, <em>and<\/em> that they should take account of that fact too, and so on. Our protocols for such an encounter have to take into account that the ETI who sent the probe are at least as capable as ourselves of recursive intentionality.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Given this assumed capability, and the fundamental principle that nothing should be done to jeopardize the existence of the human race (and acknowledging that the probe will have a similar prime directive,) our protocols should be such that given any number of intentional recursions they should tend to a stable action outcome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><u>Assumed Intelligence<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We should assume that the probe is intelligent in its own right. This is plausible in any case because we are in sight of AGI ourselves and it would seem to us to make no sense for an AGI-capable ETI to send out a probe without it. We note that it is impossible for an unintelligent entity to pretend to be intelligent (ChatGPT notwithstanding \u2013 and we\u2019re not talking about sentience or understanding here,) while it is very easy for an intelligent machine to pretend to be unintelligent. The advantages of such pretence may be imagined: to observe without the requirement of response to attempts at communication, to exploit security breaches opened by the assumption of unintelligence, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We note, on the other hand, that if the probe is intended to eventually allow interactive contact as an AGI, then it must have a strategy that allows it to do so even after it has pretended to be unintelligent. It might be sufficient for it to claim to be uncertain of our intentions. But since we know that is a plausible strategy, we will have adopted contact protocols that will make it difficult for this strategy to be followed. And so on. It <em>might<\/em> turn out that \u2018honesty is the best policy\u2019 is the stable strategy here, in which case the deception will not occur.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><u>Assumed Knowledge<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We should also assume, whether as part of the assumed intelligence principle or not, that the probe has access to our communications and has had such for long enough that it can understand our languages and mine our communication channels for data. We should assume that in all remotely plausible cases (and we need to be very generous with our attributions of plausibility in dealing with the capabilities of an advanced AI\/ETI) the probe can monitor our deliberations on its presence and what we might propose to do about it and what our motivations might be. We should also assume that this monitoring goes back into historical time no matter what appearance of recency might be given by the probe. (Of course, the probe will assume that we have made this assumption and will accept that any communications on the topic that followed the realisation that such a probe was possible might have been intended for the probe in the first place. And so on, again.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">On the other hand, we cannot <em>depend<\/em> upon it having that access or knowledge. The assumption is a matter of security maximisation, not of communicative convenience.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><u>Prime Directives<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Discussion of protocols for contact with ETI tend to simply assume that we must behave according to the \u2018highest\u2019 ethical principles, so that the first moral principles are that we must be completely truthful, we mustn\u2019t deceive, we must treat the other (the probe in this case) as an end in itself, we must show no hostility, and so on. In Tough\u2019s proposal, for example, he accepts as fundamental the first three directives in the \u2018Declaration toward a Global Ethic\u2019 put forward in H Kung, K-J K\u00fcschel (1993) <em>A Global Ethic: The Declaration of the Parliament of the World\u2019s Religions<\/em> London: SCM, which he interprets as requiring that we<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Have respect for ETI and avoid violence<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Speak and act truthfully, avoiding lies and deception<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Deal honestly and fairly with ETI, avoiding any temptation to exploit the situation for personal greed<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I regard this as well-intentioned, but wrongheaded. Quite apart from the as-yet-unjustified assumptions that a non-human ETI would have any such conception of morality or that if it did it would resemble our own Western model in detail, our principal directive <em>must be<\/em> the promotion of the advantage of humanity and the prevention of harm to it. Given the plausibility of the assumptions and reasoning that underlies the Dark Forest solution to the Fermi Paradox it must be the responsibility of communicants to minimise risk \u2013 <em>not<\/em> to maximise opportunity \u2013 because the risk is total. If that requires lies and subterfuge and \u2018dishonesty\u2019 (as the recursively stable strategy) then so be it. Only when the <em>bona fides<\/em> of the ETI\/probe have been established <em>beyond any doubt<\/em> can purely cooperative strategies be adopted. And good luck making that call, because, again, the cost of error is total.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><u>Preferred Secrecy<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Almost all discussion of this topic explicitly demands that the news that an ETI has been detected should be made public immediately upon confirmation. This is declared in the two IAA protocols regarding actions subsequent to a signal detection, and it is also implicit in the suggestions made by Strong in his proposal. There are two reasons to think that this is irresponsible. One reason applies to both the signal detection and the probe discovery cases, but the other and more plausible hesitation is particularly relevant to the latter.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There is a possibility that the discovery of the actuality of ETI may cause social dislocation. This is a common trope in SF and the risk is acknowledged by the IAA in the<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/iaaseti.org\/en\/rio-scale\/\">Rio scale<\/a> <span style=\"color: #000000;\">and<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/iaaseti.org\/en\/san-marino-scale\/\">San Marino Scale<\/a> <span style=\"color: #000000;\">documents included in resources related to their considerations of their protocols. The case where the discovery is kept from the public is the case where the <em>status quo<\/em> is maintained. Given the risk of publicity with unknown benefits to publicity, the responsible authorities would be quite justified in playing it safe until they could be absolutely convinced of the advantages of publicity. This calculation, of course, applies to all discoveries of ETI where it is possible to maintain secrecy of the event.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Proposed protocols foresee an eventual attempt to communicate with any discovered ETI. It is accepted that the nature of the message needs to be well-considered and conscient of the risks of such openings. The obvious increased risks of unauthorised communications that follow from publicising the existence of the ETI are mitigated by the fact that in the case of a signal detection it is implicitly assumed that the resources required to send a message are beyond most individuals and that organizations with adequate resources can be persuaded to follow the recommended protocols by whatever institution is finally given the responsibility of coordinating the human response. Moreover, given that the signals are anticipated to be from vast distances, it is not expected that a message would have effects that would be felt in the very near term \u2013 even if those effects were to be harmful. There would be time to minimise the effects in the gap between signalling and receiving a reply \u2013 let alone receiving a visitation in response. <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">None of this is likely to be true in the case of a probe discovery. In the probe case, messaging the ETI would be vastly easier \u2013 especially given our prudential assumption that the probe is already monitoring all our communication channels \u2013 and cannot plausibly be regulated by any international bodies we can imagine. (Note that there have already been several attempts at messaging ETI by private parties. The threat of irresponsible messaging of the probe is very real.) Secrecy, in this case, is very much the safer course until the responsible authorities can be absolutely convinced of the advantages of publicity.<\/span>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Such a strategy would have to take into account that the probe discovery might very well be such that it could not be kept secret. It might be that the probe is so obvious (or is now deliberately making itself so obvious) that the event will inevitably become public. It might be that the discoverers of the probe have already made enough people aware of it that the discovery is effectively public already and only mitigating actions can be taken. In such a case we might look for authorities to downplay or to debunk such evidence, to restrict the activities of those who have come into that knowledge, and so on. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">All of those strategies, again, will need to be designed on the assumption that the probe is intelligent, knows what is happening about its discovery, will eventually make itself known unless prevented, and so on, and that the communication with ETI will have to go forward in the future on the basis of common awareness of the actions previously taken. Here we would again need to operate on the basis of recursive strategies as described above.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><u>Responsible Authorities<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There is a universal assumption in the proposed and actual protocols that, given the humanity-wide significance of the event of ETI detection, the responsible authorities should be those that can be relied upon to have the best interests of humanity as a whole at heart, and to have the competence to pursue those interests, and the accepted right to do so. This typically means that they default to assigning responsibility to various UNO committees.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Unfortunately, for several reasons, this is unlikely to be persuasive in the necessary quarters.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In the first place, the UNO no longer has quite the reputation that it might once have had. I think very few people now believe that it has the competence or the authority to do what is necessary, nor are they all convinced that it has humanity\u2019s best interests as its motivating principle. More importantly, it is not likely to be the view of the state actors that the UNO should be deferred to in a matter of such importance. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The UNO, as a collection of competing state actors acting in their own perceived interests, is properly seen as just another actor on the political stage. No state \u2013 whatever the rhetoric surrounding its actions \u2013 is justified in handing over an advantage to competing states, when it can be quite certain that no such indulgence would be reciprocated. Does anyone think that the worst state actors would voluntarily resign their advantage in such a case? To insist on any others doing so is merely to hand an advantage to those worst states.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">If secrecy is deemed important, then assigning responsibility to an international organization is an extremely unlikely way of preserving it.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Current SETI efforts, with rare exceptions, concentrate on the detection of signals from ETI from deep space, and the response protocols adopted for success in this search reflect this concentration. The protocols in question can be found at the IAA site as Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence Draft Declaration of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":687,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions\/687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}