« Human impact on oceans | Main | Thomas Pynchon Wiki » February 19, 2008Five sci-fi scenarios MSN Tech & Gadgests has a slide show presentation of sci-fi scenarios "that will come true" : biometrics (already true), space tourism (already barely true), the holodeck (unlikely as shown on Star Trek, but VR environments using holography are likely), and domestic robots (already true, care to Roomba?) There's one more: "self-aware computers." That's what the headline says, but the text below says "...machines driven by artificial intelligence will, within 15 years or so, be handling many routine tasks." Hello? "Artificial intelligence" is not the same as "self-aware computers." Computers already simulate intelligence without being "self-aware." The whole self-awareness thing, Hal 9000 style, is extremely unlikely, though predicted by very smart people. Nobody's smart about everything, and my real difficulty with this is that we don't know enough about "awareness" to know how to create it in a computer, which is essentially a bunch of switches. How we get from switches that simulate logic via sophisticated human-generated programming to a state of "self-awareness" I don't get. If we make enough maps, and we make them increasingly sophisticated, do they become "the territory"? jon posted this at 6:18 AM |
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Comments
What I don't understand about the self-aware computer prediction is - how do we know the computer really is self-aware, of just emulating self-awareness?
Posted by: redjade | February 19, 2008 4:57 PM
That's definitely the question.
Posted by: Jon Lebkowsky | February 22, 2008 7:34 AM