Theoretical physicists working with Microsoft published an article stating that the universe is essentially a machine learning computer.
The researchers, several Microsoft affiliates, pre-published an article on arXiv entitled “The Self-taught Universe”, found by The Next Web. The article describes our universe as an algorithm that is continually learning about itself.
The proposal is that, like humans, the universe itself observes and learns about its own laws and structures - and changes as a result.
From the article:
“For example, when we see that structures similar to deep learning architectures emerge in simple self-learning systems, can we imagine that the operating matrix architecture in which our universe evolves laws, evolved from a self-taught system that emerged from the minimum possible initial conditions?
The researchers in this article explored ideas similar to research done by physicist Vitaly Vanchurin, who claimed that the universe is actually a giant neural network.