"'We are not scanning all those books to be read by people,' explained one of my hosts after my talk. 'We are scanning them to be read by an AI,'" Dyson wrote in a posting on Edge.org following a visit to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of John von Neumann's proposal for a digital computer.
(Via Boing Boing.)
Let's read the key sentence one more time:
"We are scanning them to be read by an AI."
One more time, in boldface:
"We are scanning them to be read by an AI."
(Special thanks to Patrick Huyghe.)
2 comments:
Well, Google has proven nothing if not innovative, and if that's what he said, it's definitely worth notice. Myself, I'm still trying to come to grips with cars that are smarter than me, and the concept of your tennis shoes phoning home. No shit! I am not making that up! Talkin' tennis shoes .... Tattlin' on ya, tellin' where ya been, rattin' ya ouuut, ... oh, god. My ass hurts.
One thing I'd like to see is Google give a shot at a new OS, but that doesn't seem to be near, so far as I know. Anybody hear different?
And if Google's scanning the books to be read by an AI, then they must have something in the works. *sigh*
Ever see the '70s movie, "Colossus: The Forbin Project"? American and Russian national defense AIs collude and take over the world. Well, don't see how they could do worse than we have, but still the idea unsettles me. I've staked enough on machines; don't want them telling me what to do.
One thing's for sure: in my religious cosmology, anything actually sentient, man beast or machine, has some form of a soul, and therefore the rights inherent to any human. I feel there's a critical mass somewhere, when a near-sentient form of organization makes the quantum leap, one that's by orders of magnitude, by what ever means or method, resultant with all the metaphysical possibilities inherent. This can be an individual dog, a parrot, a computer, an entire species. Once that happens, it's a person in mine eyes, no matter the construction method manner or material. No, I can't be definite about this; it's more an intuition than a fact, but if challenged, gimme a break and a couple days and I can marshall a saner argument. Or just gimme a break and take it for what it is.
Listening to a group I got from download.com, named ArronaX. Psychedelic Trance/Goa. Great stuff, fits in well with this subject methinks. Or, maybe I'm just stoned, I dunno. ;-) I like space music. :-)
Once again have to save this on Jarte until the ISP functions again. If they'd only get 3-4 more servers, the Dairty, Cheap Ba-ahstahds! rrrr
ken -- I essentially agree with you about what makes for a "soul" (although my preferred term is "sentience"). Machines can definitely become sentient/conscious IMHO, although I'm inclined to doubt that this has happened yet. Along these lines, I STRONGLY recommend the movie "Short Circuit" made I think in the '80's, which is both a funny and profound take on the whole subject.