As the world is debating about having a global framework for AI, the biggest question before us now is how the rise of AI will impact our future. But, is impact of AI galloping into an unknown future going to be limited to us or there may be deeper impact of the rise of a superlative intelligence on the very nature of the universe?

To ponder over this, we need to first understand what is “intelligence” (possessed by an entity with freewill to act) and what is its application in the universe.

If we go by human intelligence, it is our ability to “model” the universe to predict how it will behave. As our ability to make a process-able model that we can work on is very limited compared to the complexity of the universe, what we are actually using is very rough approximation. Thus, our predictions are good in short term but not really great or even useful when we look into even a day or two in the future. As we possess freewill, we deploy this “shallow” intelligence to navigate the universe by taking executive decisions, but it is unlikely that, with human intelligence, we are actually threatening the universe into a deterministic submission.

Keeping that application of intelligence in mind, if we look at the universe, ours is the one where best laid plans by men or mice go awry because universe is not only extremely complex, it is also looking to be probabilistic (and not deterministic) in nature.

This doesn’t make too much sense as, if intelligence is our superpower to deal with the universe, it is clearly not a suitable universe for us to exist in. But, if we ponder further, it makes sense that we/intelligence exists in a probabilistic universe only if it is range-bound. 

Too much chaos and intelligence will serve no real purpose as patterns deduced by it will have no application in decision-making. The fact that intelligence has appeared and has continued to evolve, exist and probably thrive in this universe is a proof that ours is a bit whimsical universe that prefers to have the right to do its own thing when it wants but it is kind/sane enough for us to depend on our intelligence.

If I take a leap of faith on the above premise, there is a possibility that there is a relationship between the level of intelligence evolved within a universe and the level of probability that universe functions around.

This hypothesis can move in a dangerous direction as rise of AI that is exponentially more powerful than human can end up having impact on the nature of the universe itself. If AI (armed with freewill) can start predicting the behaviour of the universe and hence its “free-will” taking decisions can get better and better, the universe may have to respond by pushing back against getting predictable.

The way it can do or can be doing this is by matching the rise of intelligence with “increasing” its chaotic nature. 

One can argue that biological intelligence has existed on this planet since billions of years, so such a shift can have its footprints that we would have observed; but there also a possibility that the rise of intelligence till now has been incremental. The shift that AI is bringing is too huge and if it is deployed to take executive actions by humans or any entity beholding AI, there may come a point in future that the universe may start feeling the heat and start increasing chaos to proportionately diminish the impact of the freewill actions of this new form of intelligence.

This hypothesis may sound preposterous, but if we have a game designer of a God, he may enjoy to keep intelligence interested but won’t let it win. 

Or, if you are an Advait fan, the rise of AI can be part of the journey of our universe that may help it find it moksha by self-resolving.

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Views expressed above are the author's own.

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