Can a Computer Devise a Theory of Everything?

To think otherwise is to engage in what the physicist Max Tegmark calls "carbon chauvinism." In November, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Dr. Tegmark is a professor, cashed a check from the National Science Foundation, and opened the metaphorical doors of the new Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions. The institute is one of seven set up by the foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of a nationwide effort to galvanize work in artificial intelligence. Each receives $20 million over five years. The M.I.T.-based institute, directed by Jesse Thaler, a particle physicist, is the only one specifically devoted to physics.