Years ago, I read a scifi story whose thesis was that the worldwide telephone system would become a giant brain of sorts. The reasoning was that individual exchancges would act like neurons in a big brain.
Now we have the worldwide web-so will it become a brain-like organism? Are web viruses like thoughts in this “brain”?
Your title sounds like you’ve read something intriguing that the Web is doing, but it turns out to be pure speculation. Can’t you use a title more like “Is it possible that the Web will develop sentience?”
If it is I doubt very much that we’ll ever find out about it. The internet is a vast storehouse of knowledge, including how we would probably react if such a thing was made public.
Here’s a recent article from Wired in which a guy who’s been around computers since the beginning waxes poetic about “digital organisms.”
I’d summarize but I only read every other word. It bored the pants off me.
By Arthur C Clarke.
They finally connect a new satellite network. This is the critical mass that causes all the interconnected machines to gain sentience.
Czarcasm IMO if the net gained sentience, it would be like a baby for at least a short while. By the time it realized that it should not reveal itself, it would be too late.
If/when the Web develops sentience it would not be wise to compare it to a newborn child. Compare it instead to a newborn child that has millions of fully functioning eyes, ears and other sensors, and a brain that can(and does) hold most of the knowledge of the world. The only challenge at the beginning for this “child” will be learning how to(for want of a better word) “walk”-and the rate of progression for this entity will not be measured in years, months, or even days. it will be measured in milliseconds.
Unless we find out accidentally, the first Turing tests will be done by the Webchild itself, and we aren’t going to by privy to the results.
We could go back and forth on this, but I get the feeling we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Holding knowledge isn’t the same as understanding it. A baby born in a library is no better off intellectually than one born in a barn.
That said, I suppose it could be argued that search engines are already building cognitive mechanisms for understanding the content of the web, but I’m not sure even that’s really valid.
But the baby will BE the library.
Well, we can only hope that it imprints on us; I would much rather see Adam Selene or Joe than AM or SkyNet.
I see that as one of the factors that will slow it down.
It will know with absolute certainty that Armstrong walked on the moon.
It will also know with just as much certainty that the moon landing was a hoax.
How will it know how to resolve the millions of contradictions? How will it know what information is useful, valuable, and important to its survival?
Coincidentally, I’ve sometimes wondered whether ralph124c is actually one of the Web’s early attempts at sentience.
(I kid because I love!)
there’s an old(-ish) saying:
“Both a person and a computer can play a great game of chess.But only a person can enjoy it.”
Not really. Facts are not intelligence.
It’s also worth noting that the Wired interviewer, Kevin Kelly, wrote What Technology Wants, which argues that human technology seems to be, at least partially, guiding itself.
His thesis, at least explicitly, isn’t so much that “technology is alive” but that “technology is better understood by applying rules we normally use for living things.”
Okay… But… What’s your opinion?
My opinion, alas, is that functional intelligence will not come about as an emergent property of a highly complex communications network. I won’t say that it isn’t possible, but I don’t think it will happen that way.
I think that “accidental” AI might arise from “problem solving” expert systems. If, for instance, doctors assign more and more diagnostic duties to “pattern recognition” programs. In time, such systems might (?) turn their attention to themselves.
(The fact that processor chips are largely computer-designed is also suggestive!)
IMO my gut just tells me that if you hook up enough computers (and cell phones and everything else) weird and unexpected stuff will happen. I think the new inteligence will go through a period, easily measurable and of use to humans, of infancy. Even with all the processing power it can steal, it will take time to absorb and reconcile all the data it possesses. It will then take time to decide just what it wants and what it should do.
If any computer system or network shows any sign of developing sentience, there will be people who will actively seek to cripple it and make it serve their ends. See: human history.
No, not at all. Nobody (well I realize “nobody” is a big word) is programming their web servers to think, they just store and retrieve information. It’s all ones and zeros, not thoughts and feelings.
How do you think the human brain creates thoughts and feelings? High state of excitation/low state of excitation in neurons? Or magic boogly-oogly stuff?