Some scientists think we should use AI to communicate with alien civilizations. If we use a laser to send LLMs to them, they can talk to it, rather than needing two-way communication.

Proper scientists (plural) said that? Or the author made that up and happens to be a scientist too?

Oh, let's also send them bored ape NFTs!

The crux of this idea is that if the speed of light severely limits two-way communication, why not get around that problem by sending the AI to them so they can talk to it, and not need back and forth communication to learn about us.

Needless to say, readers of 'The Three Body Problem' will have mostly negative thoughts on this idea, but to me it poses a question. What if there are other alien civilizations doing this already - how would we spot them?

Honestly, I could see this being a viable method of sending our info out. But it would have to be an LLM trained on very well curated input data. And, of course, there's the little issue of "how the fuck do the people receiving it understand what it is saying and how does it understand what they are saying". I'm sure some very clever people could come up with a solution to that given time, but it's not a trivial issue and it's a significant roadblock to the idea.