On 6/17/07, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Lucio: Given the ever-distributed nature of processing power, I would
suspect
> that a superAGI would have no physical form, in the sense that it
> would be distributed across many processing nodes around the world.
> (And those could be computer clusters, single personal computers, and
> so on - if you want to stick to physical forms, probably we are
> talking about zillions of boxes of many sizes and shapes.) And despite
> being "formless" it would be omnipresent, in the sense that it would
> be able to access zillions of sensors (and possibly actuators), from
> street surveillance cameras to radiotelescopes
That's interesting - a massive extension of Hal, in a sense.
And it is not a new idea either. There is another old science fiction movie
(which I find far more interesting than 2001, for the horror of many
hardcore Kubrick fans :) that depicts a scenario ressembling that: Demon
Seed <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Seed>. Proteus IV, the superAGI in
there, spreads its consciousness to everywhere - including the automated
house of its (his?) creator. Oh, and it also uses the radiotelescopes that i
cited! In that sense the film is prophetic, depicting a planet-wide net of
information flow where all devices are connected to each other. However,
Proteus IV is depicted as a huge machine in an underground facility, so the
idea of distributed computation was not present. (Well, kind of. The
intriguing finale hints at a self-replicating superAGI of sorts.)
But the immediate problem with that is how could it have a sense of self?
That's crucial, surely, if you are to distinguish between what "I think"
and
others think - all the opinions that you, either superAGI or human, are
continually being immersed in.
(...)
That's an interesting question indeed. Suppose that a superAGI has *already*
emerged in the information flow of the Internet. (Like another AI entity
from yet another scifi movie, the marvelous Ghost in the
Shell<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_%2528film%2529>.
Sorry, you should not have mentioned movies and activated my Pop Culture
Reference Mode. :) Would this Internet-based entity think of humans as
separate entities? Or - what I think more plausible - would it think of
humans as *part of it*, little nodes of consciousness continuosly inputing
new information and modifying existing information?
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