At the Edge of Evidence
What Particle Physics Can Teach Us About the Future of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Hidden nature is secret god — Sri Aurobindo
Prologue
How many times have you ‘experienced’ life and found that words or music can’t describe that experience but that that experience does describe life? In other words, experience begins where human implements to understand life end — at the edge of evidence.
I am a huge physics buff — always have been. Physics is the search for true nature of physical reality — it is, just like any other subject, a search for truth.
As I was reading an essay in the MIT Technology titled ‘A journey to the edge of particle physics’, I couldn’t help but wonder how AI is also a search for truth and how both particle physics and AI could provide us all the scientific evidence we need about the universe. Particle physics is at an interesting juncture — if the Large Hadron Collider can’t explain everything specially dark matter and gravity, what tools or methods come next?
Process of Understanding Layers of Reality
Hypothetically, let’s assume that particle physics overcomes that obstacle and uncovers a different method to observe and understand the fundamental elements of the subatomic universe.
However, will all that evidence be enough to truly understand that true nature of reality? My answer is an emphatic no. That’s because experience begins where evidence gathered using man made tools (including AI) ends.
Having said that — both the LHC and AI will advance our capability to ask higher order questions. With an improvement in the quality of our questions will come an understanding of the qualities that the next method of uncovering the true nature of reality should possess?
In a nutshell, the process of uncovering layers of reality goes something like this: a method or theory provides some answers but not all. It raises additional questions that a newer method/theory answers but that newer method/theory raises the quality of new questions and so on until we come face to face with truth.
Where Evidence Ends and Experience Begins
The world beyond evidence requires a different tool to understand it — our consciousness. Human consciousness is an experience beyond measurement that helps us understand the true nature of reality. Just as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is an instrument to gather evidence about the true nature of matter but falls short of uncovering the secrets of dark matter, AI will constantly push itself to uncovering the secrets of the universe but it will fall short of uncovering the true nature of reality — it’s because a more powerful instrument to experience reality is needed. Thus, AI will push all of humanity to an inevitable conclusion — we need to harness our consciousness to uncover the true nature of reality.
