Thought experiment: does AI knowledge count if no human can understand it?

mariofilhoml · x · 2026-10-19

A playful thought experiment: in 2030, a scientist feeds data on a distant, practically useless black hole to an AI, which returns an explanation no human can understand. Has knowledge actually increased?

The replier pushes on the definition: if knowledge means data that another AI, human, or any future being can learn from or query, then machine-only-comprehensible explanations still count. It cuts to the core debate around AI scientific discovery — must knowledge be human-understandable to be knowledge?

Related event: Thought experiment: Is an incomprehensible AI explanation of a black hole new knowledge?(2 posts)→

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