[QUOTE=cmyk]
I can’t help but be reminded of Isaac Asimov’s story The Last Question .
[/QUOTE]
I was reminded of Fredric Brown’s The Answer, about what happened when all the computers in an immense interstellar empire were linked together into one network/machine that contained all knowledge. The ending :
[QUOTE=Fredric Brown]
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. “The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn.”
“Thank you,” said Dwar Reyn. “It shall be a question that no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer.”
He turned to face the machine. “Is there a God?”
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of single relay.
“Yes, now there is a God.”
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.
A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Great Dave]
Humanity has used myth and natural phenomena to create Gods since who knows, and now, at the dawn of artificial intelligence, one looks around at the various futuristic treatments of the idea, and it mostly gives one (or rather, me) the heebie-jeebies…My point is, should we be preparing for a new world of actual gods that we’ve designed?
[/QUOTE]
But you can take heart in the fact that futurists are consistently bad at accurately predicting the future. From the archetypal goofy silver suits to Heinlein’s structures of moving walkways, technology rarely conforms to the visions people have of it. And the pop-culture view of AI is (mostly) mere dystopian fantasy, IMHO; the reality will rather be incredibly mundane.
You ask: should we be preparing for a new world of actual gods that we’ve designed?
My reply: we should focus our worries and hopes on humans (both ourselves and others, and including how technology is used); gods we are not, nor gods will we design. Along the lines of what cmyk says, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So, you might more charitably ask: should we be preparing for a more magical world? If your answer to the rephrased question is different than the original, why?
And I haven’t even touched on the “God gene”. Ah, well. Oh, BTW, thanks for the link to that poem. It makes me want to check out the industrial band, if only because their name is so apropos. If they strike the same chords (pun intended) as NIN or Stabbing Westward, I’ll be a happy camper. 