[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?

[gr3ml1n]

Well, first, it would be so far beyond anything we can comprehend as intelligence that even asking that question is considered silly. An ant isn't asking us how we measure the acidity of the atmosphere. It would simply do it via some mechanism we can't implement or understand ourselves.

But, again with the caveats above: if we assume an AI that is infinitely more intelligent than us and capable of recursive self-improvement to where it's compute was made more powerful by factorial orders of magnitude, it could simply brute force (with a bit of derivation) everything it would need from the data currently available.

It could iteratively create trillions (or more) of simulations until it finds a model that matches all known observations.

[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.

[gr3ml1n]

The counter-argument to this from the AI crowd would be that it's fundamentally impossible for _us_, with our goopy brains, to understand how to do it. Something that is factorial-orders-of-magnitude smarter and faster than us could figure it out.

Yes, it's a very hand-wavey argument.

[me-vs-cat]

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

> if it has a perfect model

[tart-lemonade]

It feels very much like "assume a spherical cow..."

[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.