The human brain is a marvel of neurons firing electrical impulses through complex networks of neural pathways. It can also be notoriously slow when it comes to figuring out new solutions for complicated tasks like designing new computer chips. That’s why a research team from Princeton University and the Indian Institute of Technology decided to hand the job over to artificial intelligence.
What the AI came up with was almost alien.
With strange circuitry patterns no Homo sapiens brain could have dreamt up (something even the researchers admitted), the chips could have passed for some questionable artifact on Ancient Aliens. Even stranger was how efficient the chips were—and how little their human progenitors understood them.
This phenomenon did not surprise Harvard University professor and virtuoso theoretical physicist Avi Loeb, Ph.D., who is convinced AI will soon surpass anything the human brain’s flesh-and-blood machinery is capable of.
“We’re just in the infancy of this era,” Loeb says. “It will be essential for us as a species to maintain superiority, but it will illustrate to us that we are not the pinnacle of creation.”
In a blog post, Loeb ponders how advanced the artificial intelligence of hypothetical alien civilizations could have possibly grown—especially civilizations that might have already been around for billions of years before anything vaguely humanoid appeared in the cosmos. What would the AI’s capabilities look like? What would be its limits? Are there even any limits left?
To read more, click here.