> 6. Once artificial intelligence gets smarter than humans, we've got very little chance of understanding it Is that really so...? My gut feeling is that it's

> 6. Once artificial intelligence gets smarter than humans, we've got very little chance of understanding it Is that really so...? My gut feeling is that it's probably not. I don't know exactly where this gut feeling comes from, but I think the underlying reasoning goes something like this: Richard Feynman was a hell of a lot smarter than I am, but I can still understand his ideas. Of course an AI could construct incredibly long mathematical proofs, and similar, that no human could verify, but that wouldn't be much like the difference between man and ape. Is there really an entirely different way of understanding the universe out there, one that is radically more productive than ours? I doubt it. Another way to put it I guess is: I'm simply not sure the marginal utility of (raw) intelligence is that great. In fact I remember once telling my friends that my life would be so much better if I was just a little smarter. It was meant as a joke. Yet another way to think about it is to ask what's holding back our understanding of the universe. I'd say it's not really "intelligence" at all, but rather "money". Take gravitational waves for instance: Einstein predicted them some hundred years ago(!) and they where only detected just now, after spending I don't know how many millions/billions of dollars... But either way, this is probably one of the most interesting philosophical questions of our time.