Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Artificial Superintelligence Could Provide the Answer

The advent of artificial superintelligence could play a key role in understanding the origins of humanity.

Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?

This is a question that has inspired many scientists from all around the world. Could we calculate our chances of being virtual creations of a higher intelligence? 

Artificial superintelligence could play a major role in understanding the origins of humanity.

New research into machine algorithms is fueling the hypothesis that our reality may actually be a computer simulation.

The simulation hypothesis is the modern equivalent of an idea that’s been around for a while, and it is the idea that the physical world that we live in, including the Earth and the rest of the physical universe, is actually part of a computer simulation.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is useful in physics and space exploration by processing satellite images as well as discovering other planets and galaxies. It can reduce the time required for initial mission design which otherwise takes many human work hours. AI can also help humans solve problems faster. In this manner, scientists can carry out effective and quicker inspections of our universe. 

There are 3 types of artificial intelligence:

• Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), which has a limited range of capabilities 

• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which has attributes that are on par with human capabilities 

• Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI), which has skills that surpass humans and can make them obsolete

Humans Are Still Exploring The Universe

© University of Rochester

Given technological advances and the continuing evolution of our species, humans should be able to survive in the distant future.

There are lots of mysteries in physics that are better explained by the simulation hypothesis than by what would be a material hypothesis. 

Here are the 7 biggest unanwered questions in physics:

• 1. What is matter made of?

• 2. Why is gravity so weird?

• 3. Why does time seem to flow only in one direction?

• 4. Where did all the antimatter go?

• 5. What happens in the gray zone between solid and liquid?

• 6. Can we find a unified theory of physics?

• 7. How did life evolve from nonliving matter?

The truth is that there’s much we simply don’t understand about our reality.

© Getty Images | Blend Images
 

Long before Matrix and the novel Simulacron-3, which did much to popularize the concept of simulated realities in the collective mind, Plato with his masterpiece "Allegory of the Cave" had imprisoned ignorant men in a cave. There is no doubt that the idea that we are living in a simulation is appealing, but there are more questions that need to be answered. Two years ago, Hervé Le Tellier even posed the question: "How, as a society, would we react to learning that we may be living in such a reality? "

In 2003, Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom published an article in which he imagined a technologically advanced civilization with immense computing power, a small part of which it could harness to simulate new realities harbouring conscious beings.

If we are probably living in a simulation, this is because there is a life form or divine entity smarter than us, capable of creating such a universe. Is it even possible? How do we know if our daily lives - and the universe more broadly - are not embodiments of a vast computer program?

For its first half-billion years, Earth was lifeless. Then life took hold, and it has thrived ever since.

Artificial Superintelligence and the Future of Humanity

Source: McKinsey & Company

Artificial intelligence is driving a new wave of economic progress, solving some of the world’s most difficult problems and providing solutions to some of the most profound challenges in human history.

Source: Future of Life Institute

The rise of superartificial intelligence in the future has the potential to transform many sectors such as information technology, science, biology, telecommunications, transportation, traffic management, health care, education, criminal justice, defence, banking and agriculture.

Future societies might, who knows, create simulations of their ancestors - that is, sentient human beings like us.

But, the fact that the simulated hypothesis necessarily contains a natural universe among the many simulated universes means that there would be a little less than a 50% chance that we lived in a computer simulation. If we come up with a little less than a 50% chance, it's because it's impossible to prove whether or not we are living in a simulation without our knowledge. Even if we were virtual beings, there is no tangible element to prove it.

Nobody can predict what the future will bring, but AI may ultimately help scientists find out more about the history and origins of humanity.