alien consciousness (machine intelligence or extraterrestrial)

so reading What Have You Changed Your Mind About?: Today's Leading Minds Rethink
Everything
by John Brockman , Brian Eno (Introduction)
Amazon Reference
I was struck by the similarity of arguments about alien and artificial intelligence - how do we know something is conscious? how can we make something conscious? what is society but the combination of the theory of other and a model of self?

meanwhile, perhaps Drake's famous equation, promoted by Carl Sagan, and dismissed by some because of lack of detection of any
other is because once you reach singularity, you become
dark matter, and society is simply dark energy.

there's a theory for you to munch on.