One of the greatest, if not the greatest thing humanity will ever do is understand the nature of reality, completely and absolutely. I think understanding the very reality in which we exist serves as an unset target for any intelligent species, as naturally such a species would be inquisitive in nature.

That's why I think we have spent centuries trying to decode the fabric of reality and still trying hard, everytime getting that much closer to unveiling the truth.

It sure is a tough nut to crack and sometimes one may start questioning whether we will really be able to understand the depth of it all? Are we even smart or intelligent enough to comprehend everything? I mean take higher dimensions for example.

String theory (and its variants) states that there are 10 or higher dimensions and when you start thinking about anything higher than the 4th dimension, your mind will start to hurt. So, could it be that we are just not evolved enough? If so, can we make something that can do the comprehension for us?

AI To The Rescue?

For the longest time, the goal of physicists has been to devise a 'theory of everything', a short equation, that would fully explain and link together all the physical aspects of our universe. Basically, it would explain how everything works.

But what if the theory of everything is something that our human brains cannot comprehend? What if the whole universe works on an algorithm that will make no sense to us whatsoever? What will we do then? Well, the obvious thing to do would be to use something that understands algorithms well.

We already have something of the sort. Artificial intelligence. It is already pretty smart enough and based on the exponential advancement of AI system round the globe, it is fair to say that in just a few decades, we will have something that could even rival the intelligence of us humans.

So, I think such an AI could be required to understand the nature of our reality if we fail to do so by then ourselves. That would be a bitter sweet moment for humanity because on the one hand we would fail to fathom reality because of not being intelligent enough while on the other hand, something created out of our intelligence would fathom it!

It so feels like the plot of a science fiction novel and I am sure there exists one that has this very plot. What will happen in reality though, is, like always, anybody's guess but I feel like we should see significant amount of progress within the coming decades.