# 2:45 A.M. , December 8, 2009: The Straight Dope Message Board becomes self-aware **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 4, 2006, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480 "2006-01-04T23:29:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/1 "2006-01-04T23:29:58Z")
AFAIK, computer scientists are currently at an impasse in all efforts to design or create “strong” artificial intelligence. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong\_AI](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_AI) SF writers, however, have played around with the idea that strong AI might emerge, quite independently of the programmers’ or system managers’ intentions, from a computer system, or from the Internet itself, by a kind of spontaneous generation. See _Synners_ by Pat Cadigan, _Callahan’s Legacy_ by Spider Robinson, and, of course, the _Terminator_ movies. (Not to mention every single robot story where the robot, to everyone’s apparent surprise, develops consciousness and/or free will and wants to be “human” – _RUR, Bicentennial Man, Short Circuit,_ too many others to mention). Is it possible such a thing could actually happen? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/2 "2006-01-04T23:46:22Z")
The temptation to create a sock account for this thread is nearly overwhelming. The Overmind ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/3 "2006-01-04T23:48:29Z")
Let’s just hope it doesn’t vote!!! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Cornelius\_Tuggerson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Cornelius\_Tuggerson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cornelius_Tuggerson)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/4 "2006-01-04T23:48:30Z")
There is a non-zero probability of something like that actually happening… 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/5 "2006-01-05T00:11:00Z")
I’m also curious what the answer to the question is. But your list of SF stories about this idea left out Harlan Ellison’s fiction, which inspired the Terminator movies. His short story “I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream” was particularly disturbing. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/6 "2006-01-05T00:13:22Z")
I don’t think enough is known about it to say for sure either way. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/7 "2006-01-05T00:35:58Z")
It’s possible, but the system needs to be able to alter itself in response to stimuli; it may be that complex systems such as large institutions and large computing facilities _are_ self-aware, just in a way that only the artificial entity itself can perceive (i.e. completely unnoticed to us, because it’s too _big_ a process. By way of analogy, consider a microscopic alien examining your brain cells; he might very well conclude that they are machines of some kind; he might even be interested to note the way they process signals mechanistically - they’re doing exactly what they’re expected to do, but he might be completely unaware that the total of that parallel signal processing job results in a conscious entity. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/8 "2006-01-05T00:39:54Z")
Computers operate completely differently than biological nervous systems. It is amazing that they have virtually no similarities despite being able to complete a small set of common tasks. Biological systems can adapt and change and have somehow generated consciousness. We don’t know exactly how that happened but we do know that computer systems don’t compare at all. That is really all there is to it. I work in IT as do millions of other people. It is all we can do to keep the glorified calculators running and talking to one another. It is a daily battle because computers fail at any logical difficulty they have not been explicitly programmed to account for. They can’t do much on their own and what little they can was built painstakingly by a human programmer working through every little detail. Computers have no mechanism to start doing stuff on their own even if such a thing were possible in a general way. This cannot happen anymore than you will find yourself trapped inside your house one day by crazed lawnmowers. They are machines that have no mechanism for doing it. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/9 "2006-01-05T00:46:48Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > AFAIK, computer scientists are currently at an impasse in all efforts to design or create “strong” artificial intelligence. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong\_AI](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_AI) > > SF writers, however, have played around with the idea that strong AI might emerge, quite independently of the programmers’ or system managers’ intentions, from a computer system, or from the Internet itself, by a kind of spontaneous generation. See _Synners_ by Pat Cadigan, _Callahan’s Legacy_ by Spider Robinson, and, of course, the _Terminator_ movies. (Not to mention every single robot story where the robot, to everyone’s apparent surprise, develops consciousness and/or free will and wants to be “human” – _RUR, Bicentennial Man, Short Circuit,_ too many others to mention). > > Is it possible such a thing could actually happen? Other stories are William Gibson’s _Neuromancer_ and it’s sequels, and the movie _Ghost in the Shell_. I don’t have the technical knowledge to speak about this with any authority, but it seems unlikely. Consciousness and intelligence evolved slowly in animals over aeons. There was an evolutionary push towards animal consciousness that is lacking in the internet. The idea of consciousness just spontaneously coming into being without a physical mechanism that had either evolved or been designed (by people) to facilitate it just seems to unlikely to countenance. The resemblances between brains and computers seem superficial at best, and there is much we still don’t know about consciousness. Just my WAG. ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/10 "2006-01-05T00:52:04Z")
We don’t understand human consciousness well enough to intentionally simulate it (I assume you mean “self aware” in a sense similiar to how humans are “self aware” and not a more flexible definition like **Mangetout** speaks of). But we do understand some aspects of it, and any program that emulated human consciousness would necessarily have to include those aspects (e.g., similiar sensory perception to humans, some ability to adapt by modifying both its knowledge base _and_ the algorithms that use that knowledge to make decisions, etc.). That set of things couldn’t accidently get included in a computer program–it would be a major undertaking requiring focused design and effort. So a “strong AI” unexpectedly materializing is in the “about as probable as a roomful of lemurs on typewriters writing Hamlet” realm. ---
**Author:** ![Agnostic\_Pagan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@Agnostic\_Pagan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agnostic_Pagan)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/11 "2006-01-05T00:57:08Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > 2:45 A.M. , December 8, 2009: The Straight Dope Message Board becomes self-aware I, for one, welcome our new SDMB overlord. I can’t believe I was first with that. ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/12 "2006-01-05T01:03:44Z")
> [@Agnostic Pagan](#): > > I can’t believe I was first with that. [ol] [li]Bring slashdot’ism to SDMB.[/li][li]???[/li][li]Profit![/li][/ol] ---
**Author:** ![Agnostic\_Pagan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@Agnostic\_Pagan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agnostic_Pagan)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/13 "2006-01-05T01:09:51Z")
> [@Metacom](#): > > But we do understand some aspects of it, and any program that emulated human consciousness would necessarily have to include those aspects (e.g., similiar sensory perception to humans, some ability to adapt by modifying both its knowledge base and the algorithms that use that knowledge to make decisions, etc.). That set of things couldn’t accidently get included in a computer program–it would be a major undertaking requiring focused design and effort. Seriously though, I do wonder if it might not be possible down the road that someone could unleash a virus programmed in such a way to almost perfectly simulate awareness, at which point one would be hard to pressed to differentiate between a “self-aware” AI and a “strong, but not truly self-aware” AI. The program would have to have a way to preserve itself from being “trapped” and shut down. I can easily imagine the scenario if and when quantum computing becomes the norm. From what I’ve read, a quantum network could handle the processes necessary for the AI to run. I admit I know almost nothing in regard to programming though, though I try to stay in touch with the hardware side. Once octaflop and dekaflop computers start going online, who knows what sort of ‘random’ processes might be generated. I’d make it closer to 2029. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/14 "2006-01-05T15:19:24Z")
“I’m afraid I can’t let you post that, Dave.” ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/15 "2006-01-05T15:43:01Z")
I find it more amusing to think what the SDMB would have to say for itself should it become self-aware. I’m fairly sure that it would be Pitted right away. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/16 "2006-01-05T16:19:16Z")
How would we know that it had become self aware? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/17 "2006-01-05T16:40:25Z")
It would be too paralyzed arguing with itself to become a danger to anyone else. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/18 "2006-01-05T16:59:55Z")
Maybe it’ll challenge **Polycarp** to a game of Thermonuclear War. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/19 "2006-01-05T17:38:30Z")
Bah. I bet that Jim Kirk would easily defeat a self-aware SDMB. ---
**Author:** ![Stentor\_2.5](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc8723/32.png) [@Stentor\_2.5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stentor_2.5)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480/20 "2006-01-05T19:42:27Z")
Imagine, if you will, the minds of thousands upon thousands of hamsters, linked together to become something more than the sum of its parts . . . :eek: [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2-45-a-m-december-8-2009-the-straight-dope-message-board-becomes-self-aware/338480.md?page=2)