Machine learning algorithms are already being used in old astronomy datasets to find things the original researchers missed. AI is perfect for that kind of job, massive datasets and hard to find/model patterns.

"When pondering the probability of discovering technologically advanced extraterrestrial life, the question that often arises is, "if they're out there, why haven't we found them yet?" And often, the response is that we have only searched a tiny portion of the galaxy. Further, algorithms developed decades ago for the earliest digital computers can be outdated and inefficient when applied to modern petabyte-scale datasets. Now, research published in Nature Astronomy and led by an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, Peter Ma, along with researchers from the SETI Institute, Breakthrough Listen and scientific research institutions around the world, has applied a deep learning technique to a previously studied dataset of nearby stars and uncovered eight previously unidentified signals of interest."

We already have... or at least "They" already have. But there is, understandably, no intent or desire to communicate. I will never forget how a Belgian Airforce colonel in the eighties, who was absolutely not a ufo believer, risked his reputation, together with several other officials, admitted they saw what could only be described as extraterrestial objects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M-ls_qP98M

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