Could Artificial Intelligence Solve The Problems Einstein Couldn’t?
With huge suites of data, we can extract plenty of signals where we know to look for them. Everything else? That’s where AI comes in.
At the dawn of the 20th century, there were a number of crises in physics. Radiating objects like stars emitted a finite, well-defined amount of energy at every wavelength, defying the best predictions of the day. Newton’s laws of motion broke down and failed when objects approached the speed of light. And where gravitational fields were the strongest, such as closest to our Sun, everything from planetary motion to the bending of starlight differed from the predictions of the universal law of gravitation. Scientists responded by developing quantum mechanics and General Relativity, which revolutionized our Universe. Names like Planck, Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Dirac and more are often hailed as the greatest scientific geniuses of our times as a result. No doubt, they solved some incredibly complex problems, and did so brilliantly. But artificial intelligence, quite possibly, could have done even better.
