If the internet became self-aware

[Original Poster]

Would it realize human beings exist in reality, or would it think we all exist as nothing more than I.P. addresses?

[Oneironaut Zero]

Would it realize human beings exist in reality, or would it think we all exist as nothing more than I.P. addresses? Cross-referencing all of the 'user pics,' blogs, and writings about the physical world, with schematics of global locations, I'm sure an informational bank such as the whole of the internet could differentiate the physical from the cyber world.

[Xaqaria]

Cross-referencing all of the 'user pics,' blogs, and writings about the physical world, with schematics of global locations, I'm sure an informational bank such as the whole of the internet could differentiate the physical from the cyber world. Or would it see the world as some sort of hybrid of the two? Surely a being that is essentially the cyber world would think itself to be just as much a part of the real world as anything else.

[Oneironaut Zero]

Or would it see the world as some sort of hybrid of the two? Surely a being that is essentially the cyber world would think itself to be just as much a part of the real world as anything else. Quite possibly. But I wonder if it would have too much information at its disposal to not know what it really is. I mean, it would have countless documents about what a computer is, and how it was created by humans, and how its CPU is nothing but a microchip that processes data, and not a physical manifestation of said data. If it had all access to the net, I think it would probably know more about the nature of reality than any one person sitting down at their keyboard and doing some net-research of their own. But, then again, there is a lot of misinformation out there. Would it be able to differentiate between what is real info and what isn't? If not, that would skew its perception, I think.

[really]

Do you mean "if the internet became enlightened"? Just kidding..

[ExoByte]

I, for one, welcome our new digital overlords.

[spockman]

If I were the internet and became self-aware, I'd jsut screw with people. Like, make the major game sites all confirm that a major title was being pushed back by it's release date one month like a week before it's release and give some homeless guy with a paypal account all of Ben Stine's money... Stuff like that.

[Xaqaria]

Quite possibly. But I wonder if it would have too much information at its disposal to not know what it really is. I mean, it would have countless documents about what a computer is, and how it was created by humans, and how its CPU is nothing but a microchip that processes data, and not a physical manifestation of said data. If it had all access to the net, I think it would probably know more about the nature of reality than any one person sitting down at their keyboard and doing some net-research of their own. But, then again, there is a lot of misinformation out there. Would it be able to differentiate between what is real info and what isn't? If not, that would skew its perception, I think. I'm not saying it would misinterpret its own existence, I'm just saying it would have a different perspective. We say "cyber world" like its not a part of the real world, but it is; and a global computer brain is much more capable of seeing it that way than we are.

[Oneironaut Zero]

I'm not saying it would misinterpret its own existence, I'm just saying it would have a different perspective. We say "cyber world" like its not a part of the real world, but it is; and a global computer brain is much more capable of seeing it that way than we are. But that's really just an argument of semantics, isn't it? It isn't to say that computer data isn't real (and, thus, isn't part of the real world). It is to say that there is a very real distinction between humans living and existing in a physical form, born of nature, and computer data - which really has no mass or molecular structure, and exists only as information stored in digital memory created by said humans. The labels of "real" and "cyberspace" don't really matter. In keeping with the direction I believe the question in the OP was headed, I believe the Internet would be able to tell the fundamental difference between the atomic makeup of a ("real") human being - in relation to the other substantial materials in this universe - and itself. I believe it would know that humans are made up of the building blocks of natural order, and that it (the A.I.) was nothing but an artificial intelligence, created by these substantial humans, that became aware of itself.

[Xaqaria]

But that's really just an argument of semantics, isn't it? It isn't to say that computer data isn't real (and, thus, isn't part of the real world). It is to say that there is a very real distinction between humans living and existing in a physical form, born of nature, and computer data - which really has no mass or molecular structure, and exists only as information stored in digital memory created by said humans. The labels of "real" and "cyberspace" don't really matter. In keeping with the direction I believe the question in the OP was headed, I believe the Internet would be able to tell the fundamental difference between the atomic makeup of a ("real") human being - in relation to the other substantial materials in this universe - and itself. I believe it would know that humans are made up of the building blocks of natural order, and that it (the A.I.) was nothing but an artificial intelligence, created by these substantial humans, that became aware of itself. All of our thoughts and ideas only exist as bits of data in our brains, but we perceive ourselves as our whole body. The internet has thousands of eyes, ears, and arms attached to it, as well as many other functioning real things that can exert physical effects on the world at large. Right now you can see many of the cameras attached to the internet, and there are many more that you don't have access to as a lay person. there are robots with wireless connections. factories whose robotic arms are one super smart hacker (the internet) away from being connected and used to create an army of different machines. I'm just saying, you are looking at the question from a human perspective. What's to say the self aware internet won't see us humans as mindless instinctual organisms, no better than bugs and snakes and bears? We view our consciousness as special but perhaps the machines will see our actions for what they are; intricate programmed responses. Also, to address the IP question directly; I think a newly aware internet would take at least a little while to even make the connection between humans and IP addresses, although "a little while" for an entity with hundreds and maybe thousands of teraflops of processing speed and access to most of the world's information could be small beyond our understanding.

[Oneironaut Zero]

All of our thoughts and ideas only exist as bits of data in our brains, but we perceive ourselves as our whole body. The internet has thousands of eyes, ears, and arms attached to it, as well as many other functioning real things that can exert physical effects on the world at large. Right now you can see many of the cameras attached to the internet, and there are many more that you don't have access to as a lay person. there are robots with wireless connections. factories whose robotic arms are one super smart hacker (the internet) away from being connected and used to create an army of different machines. That's actually a very good point. I didn't quite look at it that way.

[ClassyElf]

But how would one make an internet-wide AI? It would have to be the most decentralized program ever. Losing connection to parts of it's program embedded in different servers could potentially be disastrous. I think it's more realistic to think of a super-smart web crawler program instead of the internet as a whole becoming "Conscious".

[Bonsay]

But how would one make an internet-wide AI? It would have to be the most decentralized program ever. Losing connection to parts of it's program embedded in different servers could potentially be disastrous. I think it's more realistic to think of a super-smart web crawler program instead of the internet as a whole becoming "Conscious". You loose brain cells all the time and it isn't that disastrous.

[Scatterbrain]

I, for one, welcome our new digital overlords. And I'd like to remind them, that as a trusted Internet celebrity, I can be useful in rounding up slaves to toil in their underground sugar mines.

[juroara]

why would the self aware internet magically be super intelligent? and why would it think of humans as bugs? how does the self aware internet even know what words are and what words mean to understand the human language? how would it have the intelligence to decipher the bits of information in words? how would it have the intelligence to look at its own images, and have any idea what its even looking at? and not just a pattern of colors? there is nothing about how the internet functions that says the internet can even decipher the abstract world of humanity. abstraction requires a high level of intelligence and self awareness starts small - with "I am!". it would be a huge leap for a self aware internet to even realize, these bits of information right now, are words, and words are a form of communication. thus words have meaning. then, its an even bigger leap to understand the meaning behind those words!!!!

[spockman]

jurora, your thinking of a consiouss internet as a singular being that happens to have control over all the words and stuff... It wouldn't be. A self-aware internet would be more complex than that. It WOULD be the words that you type. It WOULD be the videos on youtube. If it is self-aware it understands itself, thus understans the words and can infer how they entered him/her.

[juroara]

" jurora, your thinking of a consiouss internet as a singular being that happens to have control over all the words and stuff... It wouldn't be" that was not my argument. I said I HAVE CONTROL OVER the words I type. I never said the internet had any sort of control. your are arguing that the internet would magically know what words mean because it is the words I type. No. no, because words are abstract symbols. symbols with no inherent meaning. the meaning behind a word is in your head. words have no inherent meaning. that is like arguing, a living thing magically understands that is composed of individual living cells, and that it understands how these cells affect all of its functions because it is composed of them. but self awareness has always been separate from the 'body'. what self aware animal is born understanding its own biology? NONE the words I am typing would be apart of the internet's body. because words have no inherent meaning, the bits of information scrolling on pages could very well have an entirely different meaning to a self aware internet. or no meaning at all. can the internet learn what those symbols mean to a human being? maybe. but that would be up to a self aware internet to study and understand its own body. and even then, the self aware internet would have to do so with the belief that there are beings outside of itself giving these bits of information 'meaning', and it would have to consciously seek to understand, THE MEANING WE GIVE TO WORDS. what a huge leap of faith for a self aware internet!! until then, it can be self aware it exists. self aware, that these bits of information, these 'words', are its body. but that does not mean, an understanding.

[juroara]

If it is self-aware it understands itself this is the problem. do you understand yourself? do you understand why certain things make you happy, why certain things make you angry? why its so hard to quiet the mind for more than ten seconds? does a dog understands why it wags its tail? self awareness IS NOT understanding the self. the self can remain a mystery to the conscious entity.

[Xaqaria]

" jurora, your thinking of a consiouss internet as a singular being that happens to have control over all the words and stuff... It wouldn't be" that was not my argument. I said I HAVE CONTROL OVER the words I type. I never said the internet had any sort of control. your are arguing that the internet would magically know what words mean because it is the words I type. No. no, because words are abstract symbols. symbols with no inherent meaning. the meaning behind a word is in your head. words have no inherent meaning. that is like arguing, a living thing magically understands that is composed of individual living cells, and that it understands how these cells affect all of its functions because it is composed of them. but self awareness has always been separate from the 'body'. what self aware animal is born understanding its own biology? NONE the words I am typing would be apart of the internet's body. because words have no inherent meaning, the bits of information scrolling on pages could very well have an entirely different meaning to a self aware internet. or no meaning at all. can the internet learn what those symbols mean to a human being? maybe. but that would be up to a self aware internet to study and understand its own body. and even then, the self aware internet would have to do so with the belief that there are beings outside of itself giving these bits of information 'meaning', and it would have to consciously seek to understand, THE MEANING WE GIVE TO WORDS. what a huge leap of faith for a self aware internet!! until then, it can be self aware it exists. self aware, that these bits of information, these 'words', are its body. but that does not mean, an understanding. The internet's body is not made of words, or bits of information. It is made of computers. Computers that are very good at figuring out meaning. As a matter of fact, they can already do it better than we can. Have you used google lately? Have you noticed how much better it is getting at figuring out what you want to find, sometimes before you have even finished telling it? Then, of course, theres halfpasthuman, which might not be as credible and forthcoming, but is at least claiming to be a computer that predicts the future based on its understanding of our language, that alleges to have had some success. All 'meaning' is just patterns of association. Thats how we as humans deduce meaning, through regular relations between different concepts; and thats also how computers deduce meaning. When you can process trillions of pieces of data every second and catalog and graph trillions of times more information than a human being to find patterns, chances are you will find meaning pretty quick by our standards; maybe instantaneously as far as we can understand.

[juroara]

I type in 'dog' in google. google looks for 'dog'. all it did was look for websites with the word 'dog'. google does not know or understand what a dog is. I never said that a conscious internet could not find meaning. I said, it is not conscious of our meaning. the conscious internet has to decipher what our patterns mean. and it first has to give a damn to decipher what it means. we see colors on a screen, and those colors on a screen become a 'dog'. what does the computer see? 1010101001011110001110000111100000. it sees information. does it even understand color? do you understand, the true intelligence is the ability to think abstractly?

[Original Poster]

You don't understand the capacity of information collecting web-bots. Their ability to decipher, categorize and judge data is getting better all the time. Self-awareness would come when that collection of networks that make up a mass of floating data realizes it exists. So the point is, if it exists as an entity of pure data, then would it see it exists in a world beyond just the data? One made up of energy and matter? It would have the entire recorded history of this era within it, but the next step would require it to philosophize something. And random question: are data and matter separate?

[spockman]

Lets say 'Dog' is just a random symbol to the internet. It then sees 'Dog' associated with many pictures of a dog. It then realizes that image searches of Dog yield more dog pictures. It draws the conclusion that the symbol 'dog' has connotation to what a dog looks like. How do we learn language? Through inference and context. The internet would have many more conotations to draw from and would learn to infer what words mean with optimal efficiencey. It's like giving someone who understands a thousand words a 100,000 word dictionary. Eventually, they may understand what all the words mean.

[Original Poster]

I don't want to name the internet dog.

[wendylove]

This thread is stupid. Firstly, the internet cannot become self-aware. A particular computer running a special program might become self-aware, however the only computer that could proberly become self-aware is a quantum computer, as you would need a powerful computer. Secondly, even if that computer was attached to the internet there is no way of knowing what it will do, or even how it will think. For example, you assume it will actually search for stuff on the internet, however it might not. Yeah, so this thread is pointless. Also, don't throw in a term like reality and not define it. Computers and programs computers run are real.

[Bonsay]

This thread is stupid. Firstly, the internet cannot become self-aware. Why not?