Space expansion in the age of AI

Also, Italian translation of my last book.

Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers!

Please scroll down for the main topic of this newsletter. But first:

An Italian translation of my book “Irrational mechanics: Narrative sketch of a futurist science & a new religion” has been published by Moira. I’ve revised the translation, and I think it is good. I wish to thank Ada Cattaneo, Alice Maccagni, Angelo Giubileo, and Stefano Vaj.

Click here to buy “Meccanica irrazionale: Schizzo narrativo di una scienza futurista e di una nuova religione” (in Italian), by Giulio Prisco. Moira, 2025.

Here’s a translation of the publisher’s description:

In this short text, now also made available in Italian, Giulio Prisco proposes a narrative sketch of a new science that he calls "irrational mechanics," contrasting it with the old conventional science based on the conceptual paradigm of rational mechanics, which he considers too restrictive. Irrational mechanics would revive the concept of open and imaginative science championed by the Italian futurists of Marinetti. After a review of philosophical concepts and recent scientific proposals on which the new science of irrational mechanics could be based, Prisco suggests irrational mechanics as the foundation for new religions, inspired by science but open to transcendent metaphysical visions.
Giulio Prisco was born in Naples in 1957. After earning a degree in theoretical physics, he worked at CERN, then at the European Space Agency and the European Union Satellite Centre. In 2005, he founded and managed a consulting company for several years in the field of advanced computing and virtual reality. More recently, he has also dedicated himself to scientific journalism and philosophical and metaphysical inquiry.
Prisco has written: Tales of the Turing Church, Futurist Spaceflight Meditations (available in Italian as Meditazioni futuriste sul volo spaziale, Moira 2023), and Irrational Mechanics, from which this translation is derived.
He is a co-founding member of the Italian Transhumanist Association, of which he is currently the President.

By the way, this translation of the publisher’s description is made by Grok 3 and is perfect, I didn’t change even one word.

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Image from SingularityNet / Mindplex.

Watch this SingularityNet interview with the great Howard Bloom. The universe is “falling up” rather than down. Elon Musk. The Singularit(y/ies). Howard's next book “The Case of the Sexual Cosmos.” AWESOME!

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Picture from NASA.

I’ve published two articles on Mindplex Magazine:

Should we still want biological space colonists?

Should we still want biological space colonists (Part 2)?

In “2001: A Space Odyssey” Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke didn’t answer (or ask) the obvious question of why not send just Hal. But this question seems now unavoidable, of existential importance, and central to our future.

The question is: Should we still want to send human astronauts to colonize space? Or should we want to leave space expansion to AI?

My conclusions are:

• Human-level and then superintelligent conscious AI will take over in the long run and spread into the universe. We’ll merge with the AIs to some degree, but the perception of a difference between “us” and “them” will gradually fade away: all will be “us.”

• For the rest of this century, we should pursue both AI technology and traditional space expansion with both biological and AI colonists, establishing a multi-planetary civilization in the solar system.

• In the meantime, we must learn to see AI machines as persons. Future generations will find this intuitively and emotionally obvious, but presently we must train ourselves to accept our mind children as “us.”

The words of Henry Miller come to mind: “To live out one’s desires and, in so doing, subtly alter their nature, is the aim of every individual who aspires to evolve.” We are living out our desire to go to the planets and the stars, and in so doing we are altering its nature.

In related news, at the Grok 3 launch event Elon Musk said that he wants to send Grok and Optimus robots to Mars.

Image made by Grok 3.

Interestingly, a few days before I had posted to X: “Elon Musk: use Starship to bring a compact Grok data center to Mars. Also bring some Optimus robots. Link the robots to Grok. The robots walk around, send pics/videos, and chat with viewers via X. This is doable, fun, and cosmically significant.”

Did Elon or a close associate read my post? Very unlikely. More likely, this is an idea whose time has come. AI-powered robots that explore Mars and chat with us from there would help us make peace with the still radical idea that the AIs will go to the stars for us and we should be happy.

The first Terasem Colloquium of 2025, on July 20, will explore diverse points of view on the topic of space expansion in the age AI, and diverse answers to this question. A related issue of Terasem’s “Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness” (Vol. 13, Issue 1 - 2025) will be published in July.