18 July 2020 | New Scientist | 35A
LL possible universes exist, even
triangular ones”. These were the
words on the cover of New Scientist
on 6 June 1998, when Max Tegmark made
one of his first appearances in the magazine.
Inside, the then 31-year-old expanded on
his idea of a multiverse on steroids, in
which all logically possible universes
not only can but must exist.
Tegmark, now a professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
is known for his provocative ideas. As he
explains in the “Crazy” section of his website:
“Every time I’ve written ten mainstream
papers, I allow myself to indulge in writing
one wacky one.” But the outlandish elements
shouldn’t overshadow his serious track
record in cosmology, quantum information
science and the study of some of the very
deepest questions about the nature of reality.
Recently, Tegmark has shifted his focus to
intelligence, both human and artificial. He
conducts front-line research in artificial
intelligence (AI), most recently working with
fellow MIT researcher Silviu-Marian Udrescu
to create an AI that was able to rediscover
some of the most fundamental equations of
physics by studying patterns in data. In 2014,
he co-founded the Future of Life Institute,which aims to understand and mitigate
existential risks to humanity, particularly
those associated with the rise of AI.Richard Webb: What made you switch from
cosmology to working on artificial intelligence?
Max Tegmark: I’ve always been fascinated
by big questions, the bigger the better. That’s
why I loved studying the universe, because
there were philosophically very big questions
like where does everything come from, what’s
going to happen, what is our place in the
grand scheme of things? We have made
enormous progress in cosmology, but at
the same time, really new data has started
to become rarer and harder to obtain.
So it was very natural for me to gravitate
to the biggest unsolved mystery that’s sort
of coming within range. We are able to see
things with telescopes that our ancestors
could never see, and the same thing is
happening now with the mind. We have
so much data now from neuroscience,
and the ability to build artificial versions
of the things that we are trying to study.What are you working on right now?
My research is focused on what I would call
ST machine learning for good. We have beenEP
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