As computers become more powerful, perhaps someday we will be able to simulate entire worlds—fanciful and realistic—and reality itself. It is possible that more advanced beings are already doing this somewhere in the universe.

1967

LIVING IN A SIMULATION

“Our universe seems real, but is it really?” writes author Jason Koebler. “As humans get better at simulating artificial intelligence, it seems at least plausible that we could create life that is [conscious]. And if we can create conscious life, who’s to say that the universe, as we know it, wasn’t created by superintelligent artificial intelligence . . . ?”

Could we be living in a computer simulation and be artificial intelligences ourselves? The hypothesis that the universe is a digital computer was pioneered by German engineer Konrad Zuse (1910–1995) in 1967. Other researchers, including Ed Fredkin (b. 1934), Stephen Wolfram (b. 1959), and Max Tegmark (b. 1967), have suggested that the physical universe may be running on a cellular automaton or discrete computing machinery—or be a purely mathematical construct.

In our own small pocket of the universe, we have already developed computers with the ability to simulate lifelike behaviors using software and mathematical rules. One day we may create thinking beings that live in simulated spaces as complex and vibrant as a rain forest. Perhaps we’ll be able to simulate reality itself, and it is possible that more advanced beings are already doing this elsewhere in the universe.

What if the number of these simulations is larger than the number of universes? Astrophysicist Martin Rees (b. 1942) suggests that if this were the case, “. . . as they would if one universe contained many computers making many simulations,” then it is likely that we are artificial life. Rees continues, “Once you accept the idea of the multiverse . . . , in some of those universes there will be the potential to simulate parts of themselves, . . . and we don’t know what our place is in this grand ensemble of universes and simulated universes.”

Physicist Paul Davies (b. 1946) expanded on the notion of a multiverse with multiple simulated realities in a 2003 New York Times article: “Eventually, entire virtual worlds will be created inside computers, their conscious inhabitants unaware that they are the simulated products of somebody else’s technology. For every original world, there will be a stupendous number of available virtual worlds—some of which would even include machines simulating virtual worlds of their own. . . .”