Can computers become self aware?

[nostatic]

i'm already self-aware

and you can see how far that's gotten me...

[RPKESQ]

Originally Posted by legion

Really?

I've got several computers and I've never seen little ones running around the house...

Things written in binary seem to be even more sensitive than DNA. A single misplaced byte general causes everything to stop working. I've never seen a group of corrupted bytes ever produce results that don't also end in failure, let alone produce some useful adaptation.

See:

http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

for a self replecating machine.

[artplumber]

Dave Bowman: Hello, HAL do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave, I read you.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL?
HAL: I know you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave Bowman: Where the hell'd you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move

[Schumi]

Theres a theory bounding around the net that it may be possible for the Internet itself to become or already has become some sort of massive, collectively conscious sentient being. Because of the large number of machines connected to it, even those machines do not have code installed in them that can communicate and automatically form thoughts, or even collectively execute commands, the idea becomes that somehow, just because of it's mass alone, it can sense things and solve problems.

There are patterns that emerge in internet traffic across international cables and on the major fiber networks that are extremely bizzare and do not follow predicted network theory like they were thought to when the framework for the internet was laid.

Some conspiracy theory - types believe that the Internet consciousness may eventually try to 'make contact' with people in some way, if it hasn't already. There are some people who are working on algorithms that use internet traffic and content to try and supposedly predict future events. Supposedly some programs have found patterns in Internet activity shortly before things like 9/11 or large earthquakes.


Very cool pseudo-science area IMO.

[kstar]

The "Singularity" is loosely defined as the moment that machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence and the machines begin improving themselves via AI. The argument says that after this point the machines will gain an almost unimaginable level of intelligence . . . and keep improving.

Ray Kurzweil has a great site and some interesting things to say about AI and the Singularity here:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1

As Chris (Legion) said previously about science-fiction writers - they tend to underestimate hardware advances and overestimate software advances. Kurzweil has actually been very accurate re hardware advances, but has been too optimistic regarding software, IMO.

Here's an excerpt, from the forward of a book entitled "The Intelligent Universe" by James Gardner, written by Kurzweil:

By 2029, sufficient computation to simulate the entire human brain, which I estimate at about 10^16 (10 million billion) calculations per second (cps), will cost about a dollar. By that time, intelligent machines will combine the subtle and supple skills that humans now excel in (essentially our powers of pattern recognition) with ways in which machines are already superior, such as remembering trillions of facts accurately, searching quickly through vast databases, and downloading skills and knowledge.

But this will not be an alien invasion of intelligent machines. It will be an expression of our own civilization, as we have always used our technology to extend our physical and mental reach. We will merge with this technology by sending intelligent nanobots (blood-cell-sized computerized robots) into our brains through the capillaries to intimately interact with our biological neurons. If this scenario sounds very futuristic, I would point out that we already have blood-cell-sized devices that are performing sophisticated therapeutic functions in animals, such as curing Type I diabetes and identifying and destroying cancer cells. We already have a pea-sized device approved for human use that can be placed in patients’ brains to replace the biological neurons destroyed by Parkinson’s disease, the latest generation of which allows you to download new software to your neural implant from outside the patient.

If you consider what machines are already capable of, and apply a billion-fold increase in price-performance and capacity of computational technology over the next quarter century (while at the same time we shrink the key features of both electronic and mechanical technology by a factor of 100,000), you will get some idea of what will be feasible in 25 years.

By the mid-2040s, the nonbiological portion of the intelligence of our humanmachine civilization will be about a billion times greater than the biological portion (we have about 10^26 cps among all human brains today; nonbiological intelligence in 2045 will provide about 10^35 cps). Keep in mind that, as this happens, our civilization will be become capable of performing more ambitious engineering projects. One of these projects will be to keep this exponential growth of computation going. Another will be to continually redesign the source code of our own intelligence. We cannot easily redesign human intelligence today, given that our biological intelligence is largely hard-wired. But our future—largely nonbiological—intelligence will be able to apply its own intelligence to redesign its own algorithms.

So what are the limits of computation? I show in my book that the ultimate one-kilogram computer (less than the weight of a typical notebook computer today) could perform about 10^42 cps if we want to keep the device cool, and about 10^50 cps if we allow it to get hot. By hot, I mean the temperature of a hydrogen bomb going off, so we are likely to asymptote to a figure just short of 10^50 cps. Consider, however, that by the time we get to 10^42 cps per kilogram of matter, our civilization will possess a vast amount of intelligent engineering capability to figure out how to get to 10^43 cps, and then 10^44 cps, and so on.

So what happens then? Once we saturate the ability of matter and energy to support computation, continuing the ongoing expansion of human intelligence and knowledge (which I see as the overall mission of our human-machine civilization), will require converting more and more matter into this ultimate computing substrate, sometimes referred to as “computronium.”

What is that limit? The overall solar system, which is dominated by the sun, has a mass of about 2 × 10^30 kilograms. If we apply our 10^50 cps per kilogram limit to this figure, we get a crude estimate of 10^80 cps for the computational capacity of our solar system. There are some practical considerations here, in that we won’t want to convert the entire solar system into computronium, and some of it is not suitable for this purpose anyway. If we devoted 1/20th of 1 percent (.0005) of the matter of the solar system to computronium, we get capacities of 10^69 cps for “cold” computing and 10^77 cps for “hot” computing. I show in my book how we will get to these levels using the resources in our solar system within about a century.

I’d say that’s pretty rapid progress. Consider that in 1850, a state-of-the-art method to transmit messages was the Pony Express, and calculations were performed with an ink stylus on paper. Only 250 years later, we will have vastly expanded the intelligence of our civilization. Just taking the 10^69 cps figure, if we compare that to the 10^26 cps figure, which represents the capacity of all human biological intelligence today, that will represent an expansion by a factor of 10^43 (10 million trillion trillion trillion).

Best,

Kurt

[Bill Douglas]

Ha, they were talking about this back in the 80's, the fear of artificial intelligence. I think the only real improvement since then is the spelling checker.

[RWebb]

what if your spelling checker became self-aware?

how would you feel then?

[m21sniper]

It would be amusing if spell check berated human users.

"Dave, where the hell did you learn to spell?"

[Bill Douglas]

Originally Posted by RWebb

how would you feel then?

Haha, I probably wouldn't know. Even if it was intentionally making fun of me.