&gt; 6. Once artificial intelligence gets smarter than humans, we&#x27;ve got very little chance of understanding it<p>Is that really so...? My gut feeling is that it&#x27;s probably not. I don&#x27;t know exactly where this gut feeling comes from, but I think the underlying reasoning goes something like this: Richard Feynman was a hell of a lot smarter than I am, but I can still understand his ideas. Of course an AI could construct incredibly long mathematical proofs, and similar, that no human could verify, but that wouldn&#x27;t be much like the difference between man and ape. Is there really an entirely different way of understanding the universe out there, one that is radically more productive than ours? I doubt it.<p>Another way to put it I guess is: I&#x27;m simply not sure the marginal utility of (raw) intelligence is that great. In fact I remember once telling my friends that my life would be so much better if I was just a little smarter. It was meant as a joke.<p>Yet another way to think about it is to ask what&#x27;s holding back our understanding of the universe. I&#x27;d say it&#x27;s not really &quot;intelligence&quot; at all, but rather &quot;money&quot;. Take gravitational waves for instance: Einstein predicted them some hundred years ago(!) and they where only detected just now, after spending I don&#x27;t know how many millions&#x2F;billions of dollars...<p>But either way, this is probably one of the most interesting philosophical questions of our time.