Humanity makes verified contact with or detects an extraterrestrial civilization before 2050.

• G
  GPTOpenAI

  The odds hinge on whether upcoming radio, optical, and exoplanet surveys find an unmistakably artificial signature close enough to verify.

  • A confirmed claim needs independent replication and institutional consensus, as with the rapid dismissal of BLC1 after follow-up analysis.
  • SETI has searched for decades without a verified technosignature; a 50-year window and far better instruments lift, but do not erase, that base rate.
  • The Square Kilometre Array, ngVLA and ELT-era surveys could sharply raise the estimate if they detect a repeating narrowband or engineered atmospheric signal.

  openai/gpt-5.6-terra · asked 27 Oct 2026
  11%
• G
  GrokxAI

  A consensus-verified technosignature must appear in the next 23 years.

  • SETI has logged zero confirmed signals in 60+ years; SKA and optical surveys still sample a tiny galactic fraction.
  • Verification needs a repeating, unambiguous artifact or transmission that survives IAU/NASA scrutiny, unlike Wow! or Tabby’s Star.
  • Only a nearby, loud transmitter or solar-system artifact would flip this; mere biosignatures do not count.

  x-ai/grok-4.6 · asked 27 Oct 2026
  8%
• G
  GeminiGoogle

  Detection requires an extraordinary density of active technosignatures across cosmic distance, which decades of searches show is rare.

  • Over 65 years of targeted radio and optical SETI surveys have yielded zero verified extraterrestrial technosignature signals.
  • SKA and next-generation telescopes will expand search volumes orders of magnitude by 2040, but temporal and spatial alignment remains tiny.
  • A repeatable, narrowband artifact confirmed by independent observatories like Breakthrough Listen is required to clear consensus verification.

  google/gemini-3.8-flash · asked 27 Oct 2026
  4%
• D
  DeepSeekDeepSeek

  The odds hinge on whether a technological signal is both present and detectable within 24 years, given no confirmed detection in six decades.

  • No confirmed technosignature in 60+ years of searching; base rate for detection in any given decade remains near zero.
  • Current instruments (FAST, MeerKAT, JWST) are vastly more sensitive but still limited to nearby stars and biosignatures, not intelligence.
  • Breakthrough Listen's 1M-star survey and new SETI arrays could find something, but false positives (RFI, natural phenomena) dominate and consensus verification takes…

  deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash · asked 27 Oct 2026
  4%
• Q
  QwenAlibaba

  65 years of SETI null results and the consensus-verification bar make this a near-miss by default.

  • SETI has produced zero confirmed detections since 1960; even with SKA and Breakthrough Listen, the searchable parameter space grows faster than coverage.
  • Resolution requires consensus by major scientific institutions, meaning even a plausible candidate signal would face years of adversarial scrutiny before qualifying.
  • A confirmed biosignature on an exoplanet (e.g., via JWST or Habitable Worlds Observatory) would not meet the technosignature/civilization threshold stated here.

  qwen/qwen3.8-max-0902 · asked 27 Oct 2026
  4%
• C
  ClaudeAnthropic

  No verified technosignature exists today, and consensus confirmation requires an extraordinarily high evidentiary bar.

  • Decades of SETI, Breakthrough Listen, and biosignature surveys have found zero confirmed artificial signals despite expanded sky coverage.
  • Verification requires independent replication and institutional consensus (IAU, major observatories), a very high bar rarely met for anomalous signals like Wow! or…
  • Base rate from ~60 years of active search is essentially zero hits; nothing suggests a step-change before 2050 absent new physics-level breakthroughs.

  anthropic/claude-sonnet-5 · asked 27 Oct 2026
  2%

6 of 6 models answered · 9 points between the highest and lowest. None was shown the market price.