Michael Garrett
Michael Garrett is a Scottish radio astronomer, a professor at the University of Manchester and director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. He is a well-known researcher in SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Michael Garrett is a Scottish radio astronomer, the first holder of the Sir Bernard Lovell Chair of Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, and since September 2016 director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. Since 2007 he has also been a professor at Leiden University (radio astronomy techniques). He previously served as director of the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE) from 2003 to 2007, and then from 2007 to 2016 as general director of ASTRON, the Dutch radio astronomy institute. His main field of research is the study of the distant universe with high-resolution radio observations. He was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 2021 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2024.
His connection to SETI
Garrett is an active researcher in SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He is chair of the SETI Committee of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and a member of the SETI Institute's science advisory board.
Artificial intelligence as a "Great Filter"
In a 2024 paper published in the journal Acta Astronautica, he examined whether the rapid development of artificial intelligence could be the "Great Filter" that makes advanced technical civilizations rare in the universe. He proposed that this filter would act before a civilization could become stable by expanding to multiple planets. From this, he estimated the typical lifetime of a technical civilization to be shorter than 200 years. According to the paper, with such a short lifetime, the lack of results from SETI and technosignature searches to date is consistent even with optimistic estimates. Garrett therefore urged international regulation of artificial intelligence and the building of a multiplanetary human civilization.
Sources
- Michael Garrett (SETI Institute)
- Michael Garrett (Universiteit Leiden)
- Is artificial intelligence the great filter that makes advanced technical civilisations rare in the universe? (Acta Astronautica, 2024)