Can the internet evolve into a lifeform?

reply to post by ghaleon12

It like thinking that telephone lines could eventually understand human language since we talk through them all the time, doesn't make sense.

Yea but if a single computer can demonstrate the ghost in the machine phenomenon imagine what a whole network can do.

Also by 'complex system' i do not mean a 'complicated' system but mathematical system where millions of outcomes are possible and is very difficult to predict without chaos theory.

Everyone still seems to missing a salient point...

There is no such thing as the "internet".

It isn't a single entity, nor is it capable of being alive.

The various networks that comprise what is commonly called the internet have zero capacity for intelligence, thinking or anything of that nature.

There exists, in theory, a possibility that a computer AI could use "the internet", but that is no different than you or I using it, hence that does not make "the internet" alive. Also, as I stated earlier, this AI would still be wholly and completely reliant on humanity as it's environment would be maintained by man. If it went all Skynet on us, it would doom itself.

reply to post by stumason

There exists, in theory, a possibility that a computer AI could use "the internet", but that is no different than you or I using it, hence that does not make "the internet" alive. Also, as I stated earlier, this AI would still be wholly and completely reliant on humanity as it's environment would be maintained by man. If it went all Skynet on us, it would doom itself.

That is what i am saying. The internet is just an environment and is by no means alive. what we are trying to discuss is weather a program can exist on the internet(tht is storing and executing parts of it on multiple computers) that might display intelligence.
Also i would like to find out what people think of the 'ghost in the machine' theory.

And yeah...going skynet is suicide for a program and would be highly unlikely.
but going cylon....now that might be a different story

I would like to discuss what is the MOST important part of a life form?

The BRAIN!
Data storage. Data retrieval. Data analysis.

These are the things that a brain does. What we have with the internet is the POTENTIAL for a brain!

It is like the ultimate evolutionary shortcut. You are jumping past 4 Billion years of evolution by using humans combined knowledge. The internet has such a vast amount of data accessible on it. It is like the Library of Alexandria to times a billion. AND IT KEEPS GROWING! Exponentially!

We have all of this data that is the BUILDING block of a brain! We as humans are also capable of contributing other resources for our potential life form with the use of cameras that mimic our eyes, microphones that mimic our ears, speakers to mimic our speech, even taste and smell are just organic sensors that detect acidity levels, sugars salts.

We have the tools to give our potential life form senses, or sensors if you will, FAR GREATER than the tools human scientists use to explore our surroundings.

Eyes that see in ALL spectrum's of light! Microphones that hear sound waves so low or high that humans can never hear them naturally.

All it seems this system is lacking is for humans to design a computer program and a central processor that has lines of script that meet or exceed certain perameters that we would agree consist of intelligence.

The only question left is WHAT are the parameters?

Human brain computer parameters seem to be VERY complex. SO many rules are at work within our minds.

It might take more time into the future until more breakthroughs in the human mind are discovered or understood.

I tend to agree with a number of posters that the internet simply doesn't have the capacity or capability right now (perhaps in the future) to become self aware.
Most likely a truly self-aware machine intelligence will be created in some secret research facility that we know absolutely nothing about ... quite possibly a military funded research project as they would tend to benefit enormously from AI capable weaponry and have the talent, resources and finances to conduct such research.

The most frightening aspect of a self-aware and at least as intelligent as us system is the possibility that this 1st generation AI will immediately and as a prime goal try to improve itself. This could spawn a 2nd generation (and slightly more intelligent AI) within a very short space of time. This 2nd generation AI would again naturally want to improve itself and within an even shorter space of time produce a 3rd generation AI.
So within an incredibly short period of time, an AI that would vastly surpass humans in intelligence would evolve.

What's the bet that this 4th, 5th, etc level machine intelligence will be happy to simply exist to answer questions put to it by what it perceives as a lesser intelligent and lower life-form (us) ?

So i guess my premise is that even if the internet does not or cannot become self-aware, somewhere, sometime, some group WILL create a self-aware and intelligent artificial system and if proper restraints and controls are NOT implemented, then we humans will be out of business very shortly after the the switch is turned on and the machine utters ... "I think, therefore I am"

The thing is that t this moment computers which form the net have the capacity to store and retrieve data. That is their whole purpose.
What they are lacking is the ability to 'understand' the knowledge and figure out what its worth. Like you said Cogito Ergo Sum is what makes us different from them.
The moment some computer realizes that it can do things on its own, modify its own operating parameters is when it can be called 'alive'
If this happens it will not be because of secret underground bunker dwelling scientists in aperture labs but because of some bug in a video game or a data analysis software.
Hollywood had told us that this is not a good thing but if such an entity is created we should not fear it.
If an AI is created it will look at us and judge us by our actions with our moral code which we have provided it time and again in out discussions.
If we think that it will destroy us then it means that we ourselves believe that
we are 'evil' by our own code and we must be destroyed.

It'll be some very gifted uni students with too much time on their hands.... well that's what I suspect any how.
Computers networked through the internet are just computers networked. But the computational capacity of the hardware has potential as raw resource, if a program were to be created that used those computers networked together and if that program happened to represent an astounding breakthrough in AI, then you could say that those machines represent an AI life form in that they house the AI program.
Now, let’s say these students are reckless, bored, or just madly curious and they expand their network to include the entire internet. That could be interesting, but unless it has been designed to do so, it will not be able to make any sense of the information on the internet. It would only use the computers connected to the internet as hardware resources (if it were capable of using computers which had no preinstalled client software for it to make use of them).
I think it's slightly possible that somebody may intentionally release an artificial life form into the World Wide Web. What the effect would be, I really can't imagine....

...then, exactly at midnight GMT, all the world's phones rang in unison.

reply to post by Recouper

It'll be some very gifted uni students with too much time on their hands.... well that's what I suspect any how.

Lol. Yea thats what will happen!