So it follows that any aliens we do encounter will not be organic.
But that doesn’t automatically mean that those we do meet are simply sophisticated toasters, or just sputnik-esque space probes (albeit with super-enhanced AI) created in a factory somewhere by an intelligent designer.
Rather, any lifeform that we counter out there is likely post-organic.
To understand why this might be the case, let us look at life here, on our own planet.
We humans have long since started augmenting and replacing parts of ourselves with non-organic componentry. Often with the objective of improving our abilities or lengthening our lifespans.
Pacemakers have been used for decades to regulate heartbeats, titanium hips and knees function as replacements where people’s original joints have failed them, and in the near future — nanobots will be roaming our bloodstream helping to cure and protect us from various ailments.
Heck, transhumanists are already emerging all over the place with the hope of hastening the move from natural-born-human to cyborg.
Given this trajectory, it is not hard to imagine a future in a century or two where we are more synthetic than organic (incidentally this is pretty much also the premise of the movie Bicentennial Man).
A similar trend would also play out in alien civilizations. As they advance, they will seek to conquer death which in turn necessitates integrating their biological selves more and more with technology.
By the time any sentient species conquers interstellar travel, they would have likely also escaped the limitations of their purely organic bodies and evolved into something greater.
By the time life from Earth encounters life from other worlds; maybe it is we who have become the robots that are out there visiting other planets.