NEW TECH'S KEY IN HUNT FOR ALIENS

AI is our secret alien-hunting weapon and will scour 50 billion potentially habitable worlds, a space boffin says.

- KATE NELSON

Bill Diamond, the head of the extraterrestrial research organisation Seti Institute, said the search for ETs in infinity and beyond has so far been "a needle in a haystack problem".

But AI is already proving to be "indispensable" in the quest to find little green men.