alt Hacker NewsIf we had a machine today with unlimited intelligence could it figure out a cure for cancer with our currently available data, or would it just request more data and ask us to conduct more studies? Is the bottleneck our ability to recognize patterns in the current data (i.e. intelligence) or the lack of sufficient data to determine a pattern? Or is it some other more nebulous thing that we aren’t considering?
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I’m personally convinced that at least for physics we have sufficient data for the next big theoretical breakthrough and we lack only the imagination and the computer power required to numerically validate the maths through simulations.
It feels an awful lot like the decade before Einstein’s landmark papers on quantum mechanics and relativity.
Watch how people like Terrence Tao et al are transforming how mathematics is done: with AI assistance and the Lean theorem prover, at a level of collaboration and consistency never before possible.
Something similar is just around the corner for the other sciences, the ability to mechanise the integration of vast tracts of previously disconnected facts and insights.
Surely something of value will pop out of the result…
IIRC this question is complicated by the fact that there are many types of cancer. There are probably some in either category.