Google = SkyNet and Doomsday is coming

www.economist.com...

Playing God
If Google is a religion, what is its God? It would have to be The Algorithm. Faith in the possibility of an omniscient and omnipotent algorithm appears to be what Messrs Page and Brin have in common. It's “in their DNA,” says Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist famous for investing early in both Yahoo! and Google. Whereas Yahoo! was started by two Stanford students who turned a hobby into a business, Google was started by two Stanford students who turned an intellectual obsession into a quest, says Mr Moritz. And what is that quest? Merely upstaging Microsoft would be almost banal. “We're not trying to build a better operating system,” says Mr Schmidt (although that will not kill the rumour). Part of the plan is certainly “organising the world's information”. But some people think they detect an even more grandiose design. Google is already working on a massive and global computing grid. Eventually, says Mr Saffo, “they're trying to build the machine that will pass the Turing test”—in other words, an artificial intelligence that can pass as a human in written conversations. Wisely or not, Google wants to be a new sort of deus ex machina.

truth is stranger than fiction is more startling than truth.

the global computing power of google is aproaching a massive amount of power, storage, and connectivity that could spark self-awareness and contemplation of these mere humans that built it

what then?

The one necessary thing that your scenario is missing is that skynet became self aware. we are decades or more from developing anything like that. Google can have all the computing power in the world and without being self aware all it would be is a giant adding machine

I had a thought the other day that maybe google (1 with 1 hundred zero's after it) is the real number of the beast.

?

Kenshiro2012 is correct - simply plugging enough computers together will not produce intelligence. I could have a computer with a million teraquads of computing power, and it would still not be self-aware or sentient. It would just be a bigger calculator.

You need a special kind of algorithm for artificial intelligence, a special program. One that can truely "think". And by that, I mean one that can take in information, process it, and use that information to affect outcomes to favour itself in any way possible.

For example, a strategy game could be argued to be self-aware, but - unfortunately - only to the confines of the game. It will try to figure out how to beat the human player, but outside of the game it will do nothing. Why? Because the responses it comes up with to beat the human player were already there - they're pre-programmed strategies, and are not made by the computer itself.

Is Deep Thought intelligent? No. Sure it can beat a human at chess, but that's because it can process the different possible outcomes of a game to insane amounts, and then will use the solution that best suits its outcome in the game. But, once again, not only does it not influence events outside the game, it does not even have the idea or thought that anything exists besides the game. Only the game, and millions of possible outcomes in that game, exist.

So, Google will be attempted to be able to find anything for the person using it, but it will not have any concept of life or truth or anything besides "What are they saying? What should be said back?"

A few years ago, a friend made a comment of going from binary code, to "trinary" code. I'm not a programmer, so I just nodded and smiled.
He said this would be the step to a "true" AI.
Anyone else heard of this ?

Just my confused 2 cents,
Lex

I wouldn't worry, I think Google will end up more like Deepthought than SkyNet...after the sum of all human knowledge has been processed it'll spit out something dumb like "42" not kill us all.

Well, Lexion, I know I thought of that before... a trinary system... but I had people explain to me how it wouldn't really work.

As far as I thought, a trinary system would be 0=No, 1=Yes, and 2=Repeat

However, it would just be a more efficient form of code - not something that would lead to intelligence.

Originally posted by Lexion
A few years ago, a friend made a comment of going from binary code, to "trinary" code. I'm not a programmer, so I just nodded and smiled.
He said this would be the step to a "true" AI.
Anyone else heard of this ?

Well Lexion, if we had quantum computers it might be possible!
We don't have the capability yet with our modern electrical
technology to make electricity behave beyond the ON,OFF, capabilities
that produce the binary 0 and 1 bits for computing. Who knows maybe
in the future we will have a complete understanding of Quantum Mechanics
and will be able to apply it to a "trinary" or even a "Quadratic" code for
computers?

As far as Google working on their "Massive and Global Computing Grid", I have currently been to one or their "NEW" construction sites in Oregon working on one of the numerous systems there. That is all I can say about it tho, 'cause I had to sign a disclosure stating I would reveal nothing I have seen or task's performed at that site to anyone, unless I want them coming after me with a warrant!!
I really don't see what the big deal is, I have worked at INTeL for many years and never had to sign anything saying I could not disclose what I
do out there? Very strange.

My opinion is: If someone's going to come up with trinary or quadratic computers, its NOT going to be Google. Maybe the US government already has them?

It's just a friggin Search engine. Nothing more, nothing less. At the end of the day, it's just a search engine.

Originally posted by RiotComing
It's just a friggin Search engine. Nothing more, nothing less. At the end of the day, it's just a search engine.

That may be so Riot, but why would they make me sign a disclosure if they are just a "search Engine"? Why would they care if I said anything about their site to anybody?

Originally posted by DustintheWind
Why would they care if I said anything about their site to anybody?

Two words: corporate sabotage... Google is a major corporation in today's world, and lots of other search engines would like to have the same power and breakthrough ideas that Google is having. It seems they're coming up with something new every other week. What other website that, "just a search engine" does that?

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid

Two words: corporate sabotage...

You are right cmdrkeenkid, I never really thought I could be a threat, It's not like I sit in on their R&D meeting's I'm just a grunt helping build the place.