Seriously OT: Artificial Intelligence
<< But just as sheep feed those pretty smart monkeys, those pretty smart monkeys are going to end up feeding It. Not literally feeding It, but certainly maintaining the necessary 3D supplies for It. >>
My first thought upon reading this statement was the book and subsequent movie from the sixties, "Colossus, The Forbin Project" (sorry, I've forgotten the author, who wrote two sequels.) Then I quickly did a few mental backflips through Asimov's robot tales, Fred Saberhagen's Beserker stories, a few spicy dashes of Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, and Rudy Rucker for flavor, and (last but certainly not least) Gregory Benford's five book series beginning with "In the Ocean of Night" and concluding with "Sailing Bright Eternity."
One of the more interesting speculations about artificial intelligence is that we may be approaching critical mass, the point where the net contains enough processing power and bandwidth to make intelligence possible -- and maybe inevitable. Collectively, the net's various systems can already see and do more than any of us meat people can. Perhaps there exists the beginning of this hiding out in some neglected virtual corner of an obsolete big iron data processing center. Who knows? I wouldn't be surprised.
We can all be expected to be surprised by its form when it does appear. The odds are that it will be like nothing we have so far imagined (unless it is in the writings of Kilgore Trout or one of his siblings.)
I warned you this was OT. |
