Things are even bleaker in other galaxies, the researchers report. Compared with the Milky Way, most galaxies are small and low in metallicity. As a result, 90% of them should have too many long gamma ray bursts to sustain life, they argue. What’s more, for about 5 billion years after the big bang, all galaxies were like that, so long gamma ray bursts would have made life impossible anywhere.
Wouldn't that also imply that for the first 5 billion years planets in general would be low in metal? So you would have very few planets without iron cores and similer density as Earth. There would be a different chemical mix in most of the universe.
that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for all possible program-input pairs cannot exist
The article misunderstands the halting problem. You could replace robots with humans and murder with any descision involing other people and come to the same conclusion. AI does not try to create perfect solutions. Instead you try to create solutions that work most of the time. Approaches that can evolve with trail and error. Ethically you weigh the positive benifits of success against the negative consequences of your failures.
Memory fault - where am I?