In the past decade, artificial intelligence has attracted a great attention from both academics and industry, suggesting the transition of the human civilization into a new intelligence era. However, the "intelligent science" has not yet developed into the science foundation of the intelligent age. This paper, from a specific viewpoint of electromagnetic information sensing, discusses how the intelligent science might be developed in future, and points out that the human intelligence and the external world form a pair of inseparable dual problems, as the fundamental nature of the intelligent science. Therefore, the development of the artificial intelligence goes through four stages according to the objects and the related disciplines, namely, the mathematical intelligence, the physical intelligence, the psychological intelligence, and the free consciousness. In the first stage, the mathematical theory of a general learning algorithm is developed to form the basis of the intelligence. In the second stage, the physical intelligence is developed to deal with the physical world. Based on this, the third stage of development responds to high-order intelligence involving social groups, while in the fourth stage, the nature of the free consciousness and the question whether the artificial intelligence can finally become a conscious super-intelligence are studied. Within the author's own research field of the electromagnetic information sensing, a new concept of the microwave vision is proposed along the direction of the physical intelligence to explain its key ideas and essential problems and to paint the roadmap of its technological development. Taking the previous studies of the authors' team in this direction as an example, we further discuss the research and development of the physical intelligence as one of the specific directions of a general intelligent science.

intelligent science  /  physical intelligence  /  microwave vision