Are we living in a Simulated Universe? How will AI impact the future of work, society & education?

Dr. Melvin M. Vopson is Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Portsmouth, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Chartered Physicist and Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Information Physics Institute, editor-in-chief of the IPI Letters and Emerging Minds Journal for Student Research. He is the author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe. Dr. Vopson has a wide-ranging scientific expertise in experimental, applied and theoretical physics that is internationally recognized. He has published over 100 research articles, achieving over 2500 citations.

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Your book Reality Reloaded caters really to a diverse audience, including scientists, academics, students, and the general public. It's quite fascinating, this simulated universe hypothesis, that our reality is a simulated construct, much like a sophisticated computer program or virtual reality simulation. In chapter seven, you address that these ideas have really been around for a long time. If we actually look at religious teachings from around the world, they tell us that our life here on Earth is a form of simulation, a sort of test, and everyone who leads a good life can then pass on to the true world, be it heaven, paradise, or nirvana. So I understand that we've always had these beliefs, but we've just called them by different names. And so and so in that way, simulation theory is a kind of continuum of what a lot of different religious teachers and scholars have been saying over the years?

MELVIN VOPSON

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.

What the simulated universe philosophical idea belongs to is this idealistic view of the world. And the idealism philosophy morphs into something else in this simulation hypothesis where not only everything is a simulated construct, but our minds and our consciousness are part of it.

So for example, Plato saw our minds and, if you want, our spirit as a fundamental central piece and the only real thing, and everything emerged from this. The simulated hypothesis assumes that everything, including our minds and consciousness, is part of a simulation. So it's a bit of a modern iteration of idealism which has been triggered by these recent developments in advancing technologies and computing science that began in the 1940s with the development of silicon technologies, early microchips, and digital computers creating digital memories.

This highly accelerated rate of development, in terms of our technological progress, in less than a hundred years going from analog technologies means we are entering a new era of quantum computers, like generative AI, and artificial intelligence, and all these VRs are a reality today. So this development has helped in some ways to lead to the emergence of this simulated universe concept because we are now reaching a new technological level where we see that we are beginning to simulate virtual realities and they are becoming more and more immersive and sophisticated.

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As a physicist, and it's not just me but many scientists and Nobel Prize winners have towards the end of their life arrived at the conclusion that the world has the signature of some kind of intelligent design and we don't know what that is.

You can look at the whole picture from a religious angle. You can look through the simulation theory. I don't know how to formulate or explain what's behind it, but the universe is too perfect and fine-tuned to perfection. Even a small change in anything can lead to a total disintegration of all the fundamental forces, all the equilibrium in the universe, where the matter will not be stable, nothing will be the way it is, and then there will be no life. And I'm not against the idea of evolution because I think that creation and evolution go hand in hand. They are both true, and they are not competing against each other. They are not two competing philosophies or ideologies.

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We are at a crossroads, a paradigm shift with the emergence of artificial intelligence which is going to transform our planet and mankind that is not even anticipated by the people who created AI technology. There are some signs that AI appears to be sentient, and soon it will surpass human brain and mind capacity. So, if you want, we are the creators of a new species. AI is based on silicon and not carbon like we humans are. This is a very interesting aspect. It is a new life form. And you can look at the definition of what it means to have consciousness or something similar. We are very fragile as a species. Could it be that the silicon-based life form is actually something more advanced than the biological carbon-based life form? Could it be that we are at the point where we are creating a life form that may be - by blending biological with this cybernetic entity that we're creating now - creating a post-human? Almost a new form of life that blends biological with machines and silicon technologies and gives us two things? One infinite intelligence that will be exponentially much more powerful in terms of our capacity to communicate, interact, and access information that will give us immortality? You will, just like I take my car to the garage and change parts when they break down, and I can drive this car for unlimited time, as long as I keep changing the parts and servicing it.

The same could be a life form that is not entirely based on carbon, but is some kind of blended machine, biological, post-human type of entity. I see this as a natural evolution because it will make us stronger. If we can preserve all our qualities that we experience and enjoy in our life today, but we make them by merging ourselves with this new thing that we're creating, it could make us a more advanced form of life form, if you want.

So we are the creators, but this is a process of evolution as well. We are evolving to something much more advanced through our own creation. So, there is a circle that feeds into its creation and evolution. They feed into itself, and they are part of the same supply chain circle, if you want.

So it's interesting, and I believe that both are true and both are working hand in hand. To produce what we see around us, the entire universe and life forms and everything, there is some kind of interesting way of creation followed by evolution, and they feed into each other. We are there at that point now in our human history. We're creating a new life form. This AI will change the world as we know it in ways that are not even anticipated, but we can't stop it because it's a natural evolution of humans to something more powerful than biological life.

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If Elon Musk, who is working on Androids, comes to the universities and says, "I have this AI-powered Android that is programmed to teach quantum mechanics at the highest level." You put that in front of a class of students, and you will have instantaneous access to all the books on quantum mechanics, all the knowledge in physics, and it will never forget anything, never make a mistake, never ask for annual leave, never be ill and will never ask for a pension, this is a one-off investment for the university and far superior than any academic on the planet. This is the future of education. When is it going to happen? I don't know. I just hope I reach retirement age first because this will happen.

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With the speed and the precision of the AI, make no mistake, we are becoming creators of something that is far more advanced than humans. Is this a bad thing? I see it as a very bad thing, but I also see it as a natural evolution. We are becoming creators and in our evolution process, we are evolving ourselves to something much more advanced. It's what the world, what the universe, what nature wants us to become: stronger so we reach our limit in terms of biological capacity. So this is the fascinating thing, the creation and evolution go hand in hand. It's a circle that feeds into each other.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Sophie Garnier. One Planet Podcast & The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Katie Foster.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).