Given how inhospitable life is to organisms like ours, it seems almost guaranteed that any space faring entity must be what we call "artificial". (Whether that be silicon computers or something else.)
And at that point, probably some sort of hive mind or "super intelligence" as well. (Since having billions of independent actors is very inefficient -- so much redundancy and annoying coordination problems to deal with).
It/they would probably have mastery of biotechnology and could print whatever life forms they want at the last mile if needed. Maybe purely for the entertainment purposes of embodying some highly constrained consciousness. Or for interfacing with new species encountered. Or just for downloading the stored consciousness of their pets from the home world so they can run around again.
It's a pretty minor detail as to whether the biological life forms that created the thing still exist happily on their home planet, or uploaded their consciousness into it, or were exterminated by it or themselves or some unavoidable natural disaster... Biology just doesn't have scaling power.
Space is inhospitable for computing machines as well, no computing machine has outlived human beings in lifespan without ship of theseus amounts of maintenance. It's a simple fact of the universe: all systems must be designed with their direct environments in mind. Lots of our technology relies heavily on the magnetosphere for example, or on the fact that the atmosphere is not made of sulfuric acid.
On the topic of biotechnology, it seems to me we are closer to engineering biological systems than we are to AGI. Bonus points, biomass is a readily available resource with which to build them.
Either way though, my core point is, we assume non living systems are more resilient, and I don't believe that that is the case.
Sure, cosmic rays and micrometeoroids are a problem for everyone. But computers can deal with much wider temperature and pressure and gravity ranges, eat energy directly, are easy to backup/restore, and don't get bored.
Are we really closer to solving longevity (and psychology), or having reliable hibernation / cold sleep etc, than we are to AGI? Maybe both are equally fantastical, but the latter at least seems to have a practical path forward.
We could potentially bioengineer more space-adapted human descendants (or "brain in a vat" / human-computer hybrids etc) but that will be politically infeasible for a long time to come.
And at that point, probably some sort of hive mind or "super intelligence" as well. (Since having billions of independent actors is very inefficient -- so much redundancy and annoying coordination problems to deal with).
It/they would probably have mastery of biotechnology and could print whatever life forms they want at the last mile if needed. Maybe purely for the entertainment purposes of embodying some highly constrained consciousness. Or for interfacing with new species encountered. Or just for downloading the stored consciousness of their pets from the home world so they can run around again.
It's a pretty minor detail as to whether the biological life forms that created the thing still exist happily on their home planet, or uploaded their consciousness into it, or were exterminated by it or themselves or some unavoidable natural disaster... Biology just doesn't have scaling power.