Mathematics is not the tool of scientific investigation that it has been historically. Statistics is the method of choice now. Gone is the insight that comes with mathematical models. Now it’s obscured in the impenetrable cloud of statistical methods. AI exacerbates this situation, and we don’t even know how AI works. Consequently, the fog of science is obscured by the even more unknown fog of AI.
Newton’s Law
Every function in classical celestial mechanics can be traced back to Newton’s Law of Gravity, an inverse squared law.
Classical C Mech
Many famous mathematicians devoted time and energy to problems in celestial mechanics. Until the modern era, the discipline was exclusively analytical, employing the standard mathematical tools – trigonometry, geometry, calculus, and differential equations.
Modern Research
No research on the classical problems – most notably the Three Body Problem – has been done for almost fifty years. All the work uses statistical methods and chaos theory, to the exclusion of engineering mathematical methods.
Statistics & The End of Science
The 1985 New York Times bestseller declared no further scientific progress was possible because all of the main disciplines (including psychology, chemistry, physics, and astrophysics) were based exclusively on statistical methods, which have inherent limitations. The accuracy of statistical insights has, according to dozens of leading experts from every field, reached its limit.
Fast forward forty years to the advent of AI, which excels at statistics. Since all modern sciences, now more than ever, are statistical, that means AI is infinitely more expert at science than any Nobel Laureate, and that expertise will only increase as time goes on – increase without limit.
Relativity as Statistics
Relativity theory is statistical, by definition, as is the entirety of astrophysics. AI will only strengthen this reality. Get in the way at your own risk.
Conclusion
Just as scientists have depended on computers and computer models to advance science for the last fifty years, AI will pick up this trend and max out the limits of statistics in short order. Arguably, this process peaked over 40 years ago, and all that’s left for AI is to tidy up the mess and obliterate all competition to its status. Scientists, anxious to publish tenure papers, will leverage AI to their benefit, become even more lazy than before, and entrench AI in every corner of academia and scientific investigation.