Comment by dframe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dframe | Hacker News Reader

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Incorrect thinking in two ways :

>A.I could run experiments by itself if it is provided with enough information to do so. Classical physics (already possible) and even quantum physics, once fully understood can be programmed. There are already scores of algorithms and computer programs that can run physics experiments and it doesn't take years. You seem to be misinformed about even present technological capability

> Computer simulations aren't slow. Distributed computing and processing power allow for a considerable number of experiments to be simulated.

If you work in this area, I feel you have a totally different view of things. You can either speak in terms of 'x' isn't possible and end it there or say 'x' is possible and I'm going to discover how.

Let's just consider a basic example - AI tries to develop better algorithms to simulate fluid dynamics.

1. How do you expect AI to create these simulations? Will it program it itself? I assume that the answer is yes, if so a. it needs to know how to program. b. it needs to know how to efficiently use the hardware that it can access. c. it may need to know all the quirks of the software, hardware and operating system that it works with. d. it also will need to have a pretty good math skills

Someone will need to teach AI how to do all of that or it will need to learn by itself.. This will take time.And experience.

Such AI will need to run the simulation it created, analyze it, compare results, come up with a hypothesis, and do it all over again to refine the results. What if there is a wrong assumption about fluid dynamics that is caused by some wrong assumptions on a lower level, i.e theory of matter. How will that change the results and will AI need to go back a step lower to "fix" our understanding of matter? what if there are some issues with math that first need to be "fixed", or totally new math theories must first be created?

Of course AI will not need to have everything perfect, right from the beginning, and better theories will suffice, but to say that long-term experiments such as this, are not necessary simply because AI will solve physics is just wrong.

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