PERSON
Paul Dirac
The theoretical physicist who found antimatter by trusting the beauty of his equations over the evidence of experiment—and who poses, with laboratory-clean precision, the deepest questions that artificial intelligence has yet to answer about creativity, discovery, and the difference between a mind that reaches truth and a machine that reaches the same place.
In 1928 Paul Dirac wrote a single equation meant only to reconcile quantum mechanics with special relativity, and the equation insisted on the existence of a form of matter no one had ever seen. He did not go looking for antimatter. The mathematics handed it to him, and he was austere enough to trust the mathematics over his own expectations. Four years later, in a California laboratory, Carl Anderson found the particle the equation had foretold—the positron, identical to the electron in mass and opposite in charge—and one of the most celebrated predictions in the history of science was confirmed. This episode—among the cleanest cases of formal reasoning reaching a hidden feature of reality—makes Dirac the right lens through which to interrogate artificial intelligence, because the questions it raises are exactly the ones the current moment cannot avoid. Can a machine have aesthetic
Keep reading with YOU ON AI
Unlock the full book, 10,000+ field-guide entries, and a 1000+ thinker library. If you have a book code, register now — it takes a minute.