Our Highest Priority Should be National Innovation Centers to Complement AI Data Centers
Albert Einstein told a friend: “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than any talent for absorbing absolute knowledge… All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration…. At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.” This echoes his well-known assertion that for creative scientific work: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Einstein’s imagination were the highest manifestation of natural intelligence.
The total capital expenditures by major U.S. tech companies in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are expected to approach nearly a trillion dollars in 2026, driven heavily by data center infrastructure and chip procurement. The data centers represent an investment in knowledge. Unfortunately, there is no comparable investment in scientific innovation centers based on human imagination.
It is often thought that progress in science is driven by hard data. But the reality is that data has to be interpreted. If gatekeepers insist that we should not expect to find anything other than what we already found, then they will block funding to innovative proposals and place barricades that prevent publication of anomalies in scientific journals.
In the mind of a non-imaginative gatekeeper, any deviation from the beaten path is a crazy idea that deserves ridicule and scrutiny. By identifying their ego with echo chambers in which they gained reputation, dogmatists slow down innovation in science. They refuse to allow others to imagine because their stature is threatened by new knowledge.
When the interstellar object 1I/`Oumuamua showed non-gravitational acceleration with no sign of cometary evaporation around it, the gatekeepers conclude that it is probably a `dark comet’ (as discussed here). Let us double click on that. Here is an object that does not behave like a familiar comet and so it is classified by comet experts as a `comet that does not show outgassing of gas or dust’. The use of imagination immediately suggests alternatives. My paper (accessible here) suggested that the non-gravitational acceleration of 1I/`Oumuamua originated from solar radiation pressure and not outgassing.
Similarly, cosmologists infer the existence of invisible matter based on Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity. Albert would have been the first to acknowledge that we must consider the possibility that his theory fails at low accelerations rather than invoke an unknown substance. Yet, this possibility of modified gravity, reviewed by Moti Milgrom here, is sidelined routinely by mainstream cosmologists.
In both these examples, most scientists adopt a traditional narrative which is in conflict with data and so they resolve the conflict by adding the label `dark’ to a traditional constituent. I would call it `dark science’ that lacks imagination.
Most likely, all the AI data centers in the world will not solve this psychological bias in science, because it stems from lack of imagination. The data already exists and was analyzed many times. It clearly represents anomalies that violate sacred views. More advanced data centers will not resolve the conflict.
Following Einstein’s insight, I would favor the investment of billions of dollars in national research centers that promote innovation through visionary imagination in parallel to the technological investment in AI data centers. Sure, AI will help us to analyze data faster, but it will not substitute human imagination. What the data means is the realm of natural intelligence, as far as I can tell from my experience of practicing innovative science in the company of gatekeepers. Albert Einstein would have agreed with me if he was alive today.
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In this essay, I featured four amazing watercolors from a series created by the celebrated artist, Greg Wyatt. These watercolors incorporate inspiring statements by Albert Einstein and Gustav Mahler. This is the 14th in a sequence of essays, where Greg and I collaborate on the interface between art and science. The first essay in this series, titled “Music of the Cosmic Spheres,” appeared here; the second essay, titled: “Cosmic Waterfalls in Spacetime Cliffs,” appeared here; the third titled “Missing Elements in the Cosmic Jigsaw Puzzle,” appeared here; the fourth essay, titled: “Why Do We Exist?”, appeared here, and the fifth titled “Inspiration from the Stars”, appeared here, the sixth titled: “We Might Understand How the Cosmos Works Before We Understand How Life Works”, appeared here, the seventh titled: “Will the Human Survive for Billions of Years”, appeared here, the eighth titled: “The Butterfly Effect of Intelligence in the Cosmos”, appeared here, the ninth titled: “Benefits of Extraterrestrial Intelligence over AI”, appeared here, the tenth titled: “Übermenschen on Exoplanets” appeared here, the 11th titled: “If You Had an Infinite Research Budget, How Would You Allocate It?” appeared here, the 12th titled: “Are Human-Made Objects Orbiting Earth?” appeared here, and the 13th titled: “Lets Send AI Astronauts, Not Humans, to the Moon”, appeared here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
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