Generalized Agent Theory: A New Path to the "Theory of Everything" in the Intelligent Era?

A "Generalized Agent Theory" originating from AI has opened up a new perspective for exploring the "Theory of Everything." It posits that whether it's physical systems, life forms, or AI, they are all essentially "agents." Furthermore, it speculates that the well - known gravitational and electromagnetic forces might stem from a more fundamental "intelligent field."

In the grand blueprint of modern science, the "Theory of Everything" represents a unified dream: to construct a comprehensive and logically self - consistent theoretical system.

Its ambition lies in using the fewest fundamental laws to explain the myriad phenomena in the universe—from the singularity of the Big Bang, the curvature of spacetime itself, to the interactions of elementary particles, the formation of chemical bonds, the helix of DNA strands, and even the emergence of intelligence and self - awareness.

However, on the path to this "dream" theory, there are two profound gaps in modern physics:

• Firstly, there is a fundamental incompatibility between the general theory of relativity, which describes gravity on a macroscopic scale, and quantum mechanics, which dominates at the microscopic scale.
• Secondly, the four fundamental forces in physics (gravity, electromagnetic force, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force) have not yet been incorporated into a unified theory.

Facing this scientific problem that has remained unsolved for nearly a century, the traditional path of physics seems to have reached a bottleneck. So, can we find a breakthrough from a brand - new and seemingly unrelated field?

The explosion of artificial intelligence in the 21st century has provided a possible opportunity for this exploration.

In the past decade, we have attempted to explore the minimized unified structure of the core concept of artificial intelligence, the "agent." Since 2014, we have published nearly 10 papers, gradually constructing the "Generalized Agent Theory" (GAT).

For the latest paper comprehensively elaborating the Generalized Agent Theory, please refer to "Generalized Agent Theory from First Principles" published in May 2025. Paper link: https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202506.0055.v1

List of published papers on the Generalized Agent Theory

The original intention of establishing this theoretical system was merely to evaluate the difference in intelligence levels between AI and humans.

We didn't anticipate at that time that this exploration had the potential to lead to the "Theory of Everything" until we discovered that the crucial role in physics, the "observer," could be incorporated into the standard agent framework of the Generalized Agent Theory.

Then, by regarding observers as agents with different intelligence levels, we provided a new logical interpretation for the fundamental differences among classical mechanics, relativity, and quantum mechanics.

On this basis, we found that the inclusiveness of this theoretical framework exceeded our expectations. Physical systems, life systems, and AI systems can all be incorporated into the standard agent framework. This prompted us to propose the third goal that the "Theory of Everything" should achieve: to integrate physical systems, life systems, and AI systems under a unified theoretical model.

Based on the standard agent model, we derived the dynamic mechanism that drives the evolution of all agents, which we call the "intelligent force" or "intelligent field."

Since physical, life, and AI systems all belong to agents, the driving force for agent evolution should be more fundamental. Thus, we proposed an important hypothesis: the four fundamental forces in physics may be different manifestations of the "intelligent force" or "intelligent field" in different physical scenarios.

The analysis of the above three core goals shows that the "Generalized Agent Theory" has the potential to be a candidate theory for the "Theory of Everything."