[stoneyhrm1]

> revolutionary breakthroughs in essentially all field

This doesn't really make sense outside computers. Since AI would be training itself, it needs to have the right answers, but as of now it doesn't really interact with the physical world. The most it could do is write code, and check things that have no room for interpretation, like speed, latency, percentage of errors, exceptions, etc.

But, what other fields would it do this in? How can it makes strives in biology, it can't dissect animals, it can't figure more out about plants that humans feed into the training data. Regarding math, math is human-defined. Humans said "addition does this", "this symbol means that", etc.

I just don't understand how AI could ever surpass anything human known before we live by the rules defined by us.

[nickpinkston]

[in Morpheus voice]

"But when AI got finally access to a bank account and LinkedIn, the machines found the only source of hands it would ever need."

That's my bet at least - especially with remote work, etc. is that if the machines were really superhuman, they could convince people to partner with it to do anything else.

[Earw0rm]

You mean like convincing them to invest implausibly huge sums of money in building ever bigger data-centres?

[gr3ml1n]

It starts to veer into sci-fi and I don't personally believe this is practically possible on any relevant timescale, but:

The idea is a sufficiently advanced AI could simulate.. everything. You don't need to interact with the physical world if you have a perfect model of it.

> But, what other fields would it do this in? How can it makes strives in biology, it can't dissect animals ...

It doesn't need to dissect an animal if it has a perfect model of it that it can simulate. All potential genetic variations, all interactions between biological/chemical processes inside it, etc.

[morgoths_bane]

Didn't we prove that it is mathematically impossible to have a perfect simulation of everything though (i.e. chaos theory)? These AIs would actually have to conduct experiments in the real world to find out what is true. If anything this sounds like the modern (or futuristic version) of empiricism versus rationalism debate.

>It doesn't need to dissect an animal if it has a perfect model of it that it can simulate. All potential genetic variations, all interactions between biological/chemical processes inside it, etc.

Emphasis on perfection, easier said than done. Some how this model was able to simulate millions of years of evolution so it could predict vestigial organs of unidentified species? We inherently cannot model how a pendulum with three arms can swing but somehow this AI figured out how to simulate evolution millions of years ago with unidentified species in the Amazon and can tell you all of its organs before anyone can check with 100% certainty?

I feel like these AI doomers/optimists are going to be in a shock when they find out that (unfortunately) John Locke was right about empiricism, and that there is a reason we use experiments and evidence to figure out new information. Simulations are ultimately not enough for every single field.

[ileonichwiesz]

It’s plausible in a sci-fi sort of way, but where does the model come from? After a hundred years of focused study we’re kinda beginning to understand what’s going on inside a fruit fly, how are we going to provide the machine with “a perfect model of all interactions between biological/chemical processes”?

If you had that perfect model, you’ve basically solved an entire field of science. There wouldn’t be a lot more to learn by plugging it into a computer afterwards.

[Vegenoid]

> You don't need to interact with the physical world if you have a perfect model of it.

How does it create a perfect model of the world without extensive interaction with the actual world?

[zonotope]

How will it be able to devise this perfect model if it can't dissect the animal, analyze the genes, or perform experiments?

[logicchains]

>The idea is a sufficiently advanced AI could simulate.. everything

This is a demonstrably false assumption. Foundational results in chaos theory show that many processes require exponentially more compute to simulate for a linearly longer time period. For such processes, even if every atom in the observable universe was turned into a computer, they could only be simulated for a few seconds or minutes more, due to the nature of exponential growth. This is an incontrovertible mathematical law of the universe, the same way that it's fundamentally impossible to sort an arbitrary array in O(1) time.

[me-vs-cat]

You're right, but how much heavy lifting is within this phrase?

> if it has a perfect model

[goatlover]

A perfect model of the world is the world. Are you saying AI will become the universe?

[aldousd666]

You can be super-human intelligent, and still not have a perfect model of the world.

[loandbehold]

We aren't that far away from AI that can interact with physical world and run it's own experiments. Robots in humanoid and other forms are getting good and will be able to do everything humans can do in a few years.