As stated by the author, this is necessarily a speculative piece ("assuming that..."), but still worth reading -- as long as you keep that in mind. It makes no

As stated by the author, this is necessarily a speculative piece ("assuming that..."), but still worth reading -- as long as you keep that in mind. It makes no sense to criticize it or dismiss it for being speculative, as others have done here! By the way, if you enjoy reading this piece, you might also enjoy really interesting paper coauthored by the same person: "Why does deep and cheap learning work so well?," available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.08225 https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.08225 -- it posits that deep learning works well because of the particular structure of the laws of physics in the universe in which we happen to live.