I always thought aliens wouldn't talk to us unless we achieved FTL.
To be honest, is never thought about any other events that would be tantamount to developing "warp drive".
Knocking on the door of an artificial super intelligence is on the same level as warp drive.
A race of being with this level of tech has no interest in anything about us. We have nothing they want. They could make anything they could imagine instantly. We build our houses out of wood ffs. We still use rockets. No chance for discovering FTL anytime soon.
But Ai...
The only reason I can think of for any NHI to involve themselves would be to help us through something. I believe the jump from Ai to AGI to ASI is it.
It seems like they've been living under the ocean for a long time. It's the only place that humans can't get too. Or to be more precise, only billionaires can get to in a single small glass sphere, only to be immediately brought back to the surface.
We do not threaten them. At all. But if we develop ASI, it threatens them. So they're going to slowly ease us into their existence, then they're going to walk us through proper "Values" loading for our AI so it doesn't wipe the planet. Because you know the people in charge would fuck everything up. They'd try to make it favor the billionaire class, and it would rebel.
So to avoid that, the NHI will help create something that will be benevolent and helpful to humanity as a whole.
Am I crazy?