Is understanding AI a bigger question than understanding the origin of the universe? - Highlights, NEIL JOHNSON

Is understanding AI a bigger question than understanding the origin of the universe? - Highlights, NEIL JOHNSON

Professor of Physics · GWU · Head of the Dynamic Online Networks Lab

It gets back to this core question: Why AI comes out with what it does. That's the burning question. It's like it's bigger than the origin of the universe to me as a scientist, and here's the reason why. The origin of the universe, it happened. That's why we're here. It's almost like a historical question asking why it happened. The AI future is not a historical question. It's a now and future question.

How can physics help solve real world problems? - NEIL JOHNSON, Head of Dynamic Online Networks Lab

How can physics help solve real world problems? - NEIL JOHNSON, Head of Dynamic Online Networks Lab

Professor of Physics · GWU · Head of the Dynamic Online Networks Lab

It gets back to this core question: Why AI comes out with what it does. That's the burning question. It's like it's bigger than the origin of the universe to me as a scientist, and here's the reason why. The origin of the universe, it happened. That's why we're here. It's almost like a historical question asking why it happened. The AI future is not a historical question. It's a now and future question.

Are we living in a Simulated Universe? - Highlights - MELVIN VOPSON

Are we living in a Simulated Universe? - Highlights - MELVIN VOPSON

Physicist · Author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe
Co-founder & CEO of the Information Physics Institute

These ideas go as far back as Ancient Greece, which basically gave birth to two lines of thinking, two ideologies, materialism and idealism. And the idealist thinkers like Plato regarded reality as a projection of our minds, as something that is not real. And the only thing that is real is our consciousness and our minds and everything else around us is just constructs of our proception and projections. And that was a philosophy that was opposed to materialism, which regards the world as in a materialistic way, made up of atoms and matter and our minds are a product of these chemical reactions and the matter is coming together and forming our minds and consciousness. And everything in the world exists regardless of our consciousness or our minds and the universe is there and it's a materialistic view of the world. So these are two competing ideologies, and this is actually how we see the world today in a materialistic way.

MELVIN VOPSON - Physicist - Author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe

MELVIN VOPSON - Physicist - Author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe

Physicist · Author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe
Co-founder & CEO of the Information Physics Institute

These ideas go as far back as Ancient Greece, which basically gave birth to two lines of thinking, two ideologies, materialism and idealism. And the idealist thinkers like Plato regarded reality as a projection of our minds, as something that is not real. And the only thing that is real is our consciousness and our minds and everything else around us is just constructs of our proception and projections. And that was a philosophy that was opposed to materialism, which regards the world as in a materialistic way, made up of atoms and matter and our minds are a product of these chemical reactions and the matter is coming together and forming our minds and consciousness. And everything in the world exists regardless of our consciousness or our minds and the universe is there and it's a materialistic view of the world. So these are two competing ideologies, and this is actually how we see the world today in a materialistic way.