Limits of AI as Established by a Multi-Layered Symmetry-Based Model of Light

It has been said that the future of Life is about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and that as AI advances a point will be reached, the Singularity, when humans will no longer have a clue as to what is going on nor why. On the contrary, this article will make the case that the future of Life is enabled by the pre-existent complexity that exists in every iota of it. This pre-existent complexity derives from a multi-layered, symmetry-based model of light from which fundamental layers of matter and life – including the electromagnetic field, quantum particles, atoms, and cells - can be proposed to emerge. As such matter and life are an integral part of a unified light-based edifice proposed to have infinite-potential resident in it. By contrast contemporary AI is based on mind-based processes such as memory, computation, sensing, and learning that operate within a defined and limited conceptual space and are positioned to be substrate independent. This conceptual space and the operating principles that define it limit AI, which in its current incarnation cannot rival the kinds of creations and possibilities inherent in a multi-layered symmetry-based model of light. Unless the gap to such a unified light-based edifice is bridged, AI will always have limits within which its possibilities will be bound.