You are reading Molekyl, finally unfinished thinking on strategy, creativity and technology. Subscribe here to get new posts in your inbox.
NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) is a network of telescopes designed to detect asteroids that could hit earth. In July this year, one of its telescopes discovered something other than your regular asteroid or comet: The third interstellar object on record to enter our solar system. The 3I/Atlas.
Having rocks visiting our solar system from other parts of the universe is newsworthy in itself (after all, it's only the third time on record), but what makes the 3I/Atlas several levels more exciting is its anomalies.
The object appears to not have the bright tail of gas and dust as it approaches the sun, as is common for comets. It follows an unlikely trajectory. Some observations might suggest its acceleration is non gravitational. And some suggest it might be emitting light.
All of this weirdness has unsurprisingly sparked the curiosity of both researchers and the broader public. For me, just as interesting is the debate that has followed its discovery.
On one side you have NASA and a majority of the establishment saying that 3I/Atlas is a comet. On the other side, you have Avi Loeb, renowned Astrophysicist and professor at Harvard, suggesting that 3I/Atlas might be alien technology.
At least this is how the debate has been portrayed in the media coverage of the ongoing sightings.
They all have the same data, but seem to reach different conclusions. How come? Aren't they scientists?
The null
It's intuitive to think that science is about finding answers. It is, but not as much as it's about asking questions.
The way science asks questions is to formulate a hypothesis, then test whether there’s enough evidence for it to reject the default assumption - the null hypothesis. If evidence is sufficiently strong, the null hypothesis can be rejected in favour of the alternative hypothesis that then seems like the better answer.
In experiments, the convention is to use status quo (no change) as the null hypothesis. For example, that a new medicine does not lead to any notable changes in how sick people are. If evidence supporting the alternative hypothesis that the new medicine does make people healthier is sufficiently strong, researchers reject the null hypothesis and conclude that the medicine having an effect is the better answer.
Interestingly, this is also how many strategists think about strategy. A strategy is after all a set of hypotheses about what, why and how a firm should compete to reach certain goals. A given strategy is assumed (implicitly or explicitly) to hold until we have sufficiently strong evidence to reject it in favour of an alternative strategy.
The convention in both research and strategy is thus to use status quo as the null hypothesis. But what happens if different people work out from different null hypotheses when looking at the same phenomenon?
Null null
Reverting back to the 3I/Atlas sightings, this is what seems to be spurring so much debate.
NASA together with most of the established research community follow the convention of using status quo as the null hypothesis. That any object observed in space is of natural origin. Which makes good sense since we have yet to ever discover any signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life.
Astronomer Carl Sagan said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And so far, scientists have not seen the extraordinary evidence needed to reject the hypothesis that 3I/Atlas is of natural origin, in favour of the alternative of it being artificial. So it’s a comet.
Avi Loeb, on the other hand, seems to look to the sky with a different null hypothesis in mind: that any anomalous object flying in from outer space is of alien origin, until proven it is not. From this blog post, he seems to do this in part as a pedagogical exercise to spur interest and debate in the sightings, and in part because of a general worry that astronomers are to comfortable in their status quo to actively look close enough for evidence that might contradict their null hypothesis.
In another post, Loeb advocates for starting with the assumption that 3I/Atlas is alien technology and “[…] then encourage observers to collect as much data as possible in an attempt to prove it wrong”. Loeb here grounds his view in Blaise Pascal’s famous wager about believing in God: if the consequences of an outcome is sufficiently large if true, pursuing it might be the rational choice even if its likelihood is low.
And this seems to be the origin of the seemingly different beliefs of the two camps of the debate. While formally they are testing the same hypothesis, from the outside it looks like they operate with two different null hypotheses in mind. One that assumes natural until proven otherwise, another that keeps alien technology as a working hypothesis until proven wrong.
But beyond creating vivid debates, the different points of departure carry some interesting insights relevant for a strategic dilemma confronting many decision makers today: how to respond to potential technological disruptions before their impact is clear.
Get it right, or get it wrong
Any leader in charge of strategy is, like the scientists studying space, aware that stuff can happen in their surroundings that might affect the validity of their strategy. Like new technology emerging on the horizon that one day could pull the rug away under any status quo strategy.
Technological changes are particularly interesting from a strategy perspective because they usually become visible long before their potential impacts might materialise. Just like the researchers noticed 3I/Atlas months before it will reach its closest distance to earth, leaders often need to make decisions long before it can be known if the right choice was made.
This creates a strategic dilemma. Established firms can wait until a new technology and its uses have matured enough to prove its worth before making any irreversible decisions, but then, as history has shown over and over again, it might be too late. Or they could change early to avoid falling behind other early movers, with the risk that the entire hype was just that. A hype.
Over the last few years, many have felt this dilemma in their gut with AI: Should we keep on going with our current strategy that has worked so well in the past, or kick it in favour of a new AI-first strategy to be better prepared for what might come?
In making this decision, decision makers can be wrong in two different ways. One way is by rejecting their current strategy in favour of a more AI-intensive strategy, when it later turns out that AI was only a hype and they shouldn’t have. We call this a false positive or a Type 1 error. The other potential wrong is to keep their strategy, when it later turns out that the hype was real and they should have rejected their status quo. This we call a false negative or Type 2 error.
The interesting point is that the more one tries to avoid one of the two errors, the more likely one is to make the other.
The more conclusive evidence required to reject your current strategy to avoid a Type 1 error, the more likely you are to make a Type 2 error where you keep your strategy when you shouldn't. And similarly, the more trigger happy you are to reject your current strategy based on early evidence, the more likely you are to make Type 1 errors by changing when you shouldn’t.
Believe the hype?
And this is where the choice of null hypothesis comes into play again. Established companies, just like NASA and the scientific establishment, work out of the null hypothesis that status quo still holds. That the current strategy will also work tomorrow despite AI developments, until this is proven wrong.
In principle correct, in practice potentially problematic if it leads a company to sit too comfortably in this position. Just as Loeb criticises NASA and the scientific community for their apparent low openness to the possibility of finding signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life, the comfort of status quo might make established companies less active in seeking evidence that might contradict it.
In contrast, many entrepreneurs seems to follow a path closer to Avi Loeb’s pedagogical exercise. They have already logically falsified the status quo, and instead work out from AI-first strategies being the future, until proven wrong.
In other words; incumbents work out of the mantra "don't believe the hype until you can", while their challengers work out of the mantra "believe the hype, until you can't".
In general, adopting the latter stance is more likely to fail. Avi Loeb himself even acknowledges that 3I/Atlas most likely is just a comet. Which adds up since we have yet to find any proof of extraterrestrial life anywhere. Similarly, many technological hypes do not deliver the proposed economic impacts..
But if 3I/Atlas would turn out to be alien technology, the name we will associate with its discovery will be Avi Loeb. If intelligent extraterrestrial life is ever discovered, he or someone like him will be remembered as the Galileo Galilei of their time.
Similarly, if the AI hype turns out to be real, it will favour the entrepreneurs and companies that for years have worked out of an AI-first hypothesis. Those that took the alternative hypothesis more seriously, and leaned in to explore its nature.
The incumbents that finally, much later, reject their status quo strategies and start their AI-transformation after the extraordinary evidence has emerged, will be at a disadvantage.
Just as we have seen with other technological shifts in the past.
Closing
The 3I/Atlas debate is therefore a perfect reminder that just by taking a different point of departure can make people see the same phenomenon and the same evidence in very different lights.
NASA has yet to find sufficient evidence to reject the assumption that this isn't a natural object. But they have also yet to find the evidence to prove that 3I/Atlas isn't some alien technology. Until sufficient evidence appears enabling the researchers to reject one of the hypotheses, the debate will continue.
The bigger take-away, however, is the point of Avi Loeb: when we are comfortable in status quo, we often don't look as actively for evidence of alternative explanations that might contradict our default position. With the result that evidence that might be there, is overlooked.
The companies still sitting on the fence with AI might very well be doing the sane thing. Their conservative null hypothesis - requiring extraordinary evidence before rejecting status quo - protects them from the Type 1 errors of chasing hypes that turn out to be nothing. But disruption is essentially a Type 2 error. Failing to act when you should have. And the more complacent you are in status quo, the less active you will look for evidence that contradict your stance, and the more likely you will be to make this type of error.
While the classic mantra is to not believe the hype, there are therefore situations where it might also be rational to do the opposite, if not only to shake things up a bit: believe the hype, until the hype is proven wrong. Because as Blaise Pascal first argued almost 400 years ago, when the stakes are high enough for a given outcome, the stance that looks irrational might actually be the rational one