Could Artificial Intelligence or quantumcomputing be of use in expanding physical reach beyond what is possible now? Could a computer-generated thought redefine time and space?
Problems in physics reduce to engineering - we need to learn to decipher the structure of matter and reality. The more we learn how matter and reality are structured the more we can solve real-world problems and create new products and sciences which were previously impossible and unthinkable.
True AI and QC could exponentially increase computing power. This means more power to decipher and glimpse into the inner working of reality. Forget the “Is it alive?” aspect of AI, focusing only on the power of a recursively-augmenting computer system which is self-sustaining and evolutionary, this system could in theory solve any and every problem that is in fact solvable - because no inherent limit exists within such a computing system. It will learn, self-enhance, grow, augment itself, and expand into new analyses and insights until solutions are found, simply because it will progressively exhaust all possibilities one at a time. If this AI is more advanced and endowed with true creativity then the timeframe for solving even more complex problems is greatly reduced.
Take any example of a physical problem and it will reduce to mathematics. Want to build a time traveling device? Want to transmute water into wine, or lead into gold? Want to replicate infinite food or energy at the touch fo a button? Want to teleport to the moon? These are all mathematical problems. Therefore they can be unravelled by computing, to the extent that a real solution exists to these problems in our reality. In that sense, if it is possible, then a sufficiently powerful computing system, either AI or QC, could - and we might even say, will - eventually solve it.