monk.e.boy comments on Ghosts in the Machine - Less Wrong

18 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 June 2008 11:29PM

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Comment author: monk.e.boy 18 June 2008 04:24:18PM 0 points [-]

I am a 30 year old programmer. I was talking to my brother (who is also a programmer) about the Internet, and he said it wouldn't be long until it was sentient.

I literally snorted in disbelief.

I mean, we both use PHP Apache MySQL etc, if I so wish I can look at the actual machine code produced. I know for a fact that no intelligence is going to immerge from that.

Lets say we, as humans, placed some code on every server on the net that mimics a neuron. Is that going to become sentient? I have no idea. Probably not.

But there is a universe of difference between the two programs.

I wonder if AI is possible? Is it possible for a programmer like me to build something complex enough in software? I can hardly program a simple calculator with out bugs...

monk.e.boy

Comment author: DanielLC 07 June 2012 05:27:17AM 0 points [-]

Was he saying that somebody would program it to be sentient, or that it would just become sentient by virtue of the amount of information passing through it?