MadSci Network: Computer Science
Query:

Re: What would be signs that the Internet has become 'selfaware'?

Date: Tue Mar 9 07:54:51 2010
Posted By: Archis Gore, Software Development Engineer
Area of science: Computer Science
ID: 1268085348.Cs
Message:

I'll avoid speaking of what would make it self aware and the limitations 
to it happening, which is unlikely considering that the internet is still 
nowhere close to how our brains work.

And yet, the only real quantifiable signs that the internet is self aware 
would mainly be based on philosophical definitions of "free will". Lets 
look at two possible scenarios:

1. In one scenario, the detection would be easy. Every node and 
connection on the internet, or any artificial system for that matter, is 
based on a system of rules. Systems behave based on their programming. 
Most of this programming is not adaptive in terms of procedures. 
The "code" that runs on these nodes/connections remains fixed even if it 
responds differently to different data.

This means that the behaviour of every single node and connection is not 
only predictable, but also monitored scrupulously by the architects that 
built it. Any change in this behaviour would be very easily detected and 
we would have signs that something is wrong.

In this scenario, it won't be "too late" to react either, since in every 
conceivable scenario the administrators would quickly start debugging 
these machines and take them offline.

2. The second scenario is a bit more vague. Theoretically speaking (and 
this has been discussed ad nauseum for decades now), our brain too, is a 
very predictable system at a chemical level. It is a bunch of molecules 
crammed together that are performing a series of chemical reactions. 
There's nothing really magical that happens in our body that isn't the 
result of reliable, consistent, predicatable physics.

And yet, what makes us self-aware and gives us free will? The debate has 
gone on for centuries and we haven't found a universal answer that many 
people have agreed upon. To look at the individual reactions taking 
place, we'd never be able to guess that these reactions are a part of an 
intelligent organism or whether they are being conducted in a test-tube. 
In the same way, what we observe of the internet is a very small subset, 
and we'd probably never know that it did become self-aware so long as the 
individual blocks that we care about are doing what we want.

In this scenario, it's quite possible that the internet will become self-
aware and yet every single block that goes into it will behave according 
to simple predictable rules.

The honest answer in this case is simply, "I don't know". There really 
isn't a set of tests that can determine whether or not a system is self-
aware. The closest test that comes to testing an intelligence very 
similar to a human being is called the "Turing Test" and it isn't 
very "sciency" in nature either.

The test requires that a human being be placed in front of a computer 
screen and interact with one human and one machine on the other side 
without knowing who is whom. Throughout this interactive session, if the 
human is not able to guess which one is the machine and which one is not, 
then the machine has reached an acceptable level of human-like 
intelligence.

If the internet were to communicate with us in some way, we would figure 
it out. I admit this may not be the most satisfactory answer you might be 
looking for.


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