It seems like pure science fiction but still… It reminds me of how our brains work… Given the sheer amount of information it contains and the countless connections between all those bits of information, does anyone see any possibility that the internet could at some point begin to reason and thus acquire a consciousness of its own?
Answer
Hi Serge,
Your idea sounds like pure science fiction, but I don’t think it is. The functioning of our brains have already served as an example for a method in Artificial Intelligence (AI), namely a neural network. Although it served as an idea, a neural network is actually a network of mathematical modules. All inputs of such a module are taken together and an output value is calculated from that. This value then serves as input from another neuron (such a mathematical module) etc.
Your question is of course about the internet, but first you have to ask yourself: “What is the internet?”. If you defined the internet as a collection of nodes that are interconnected and can communicate with each other, you could in principle extend the idea of a neural network and thus not be limited theoretically to the limits of a single computer.
Sharing computer resources is already being used, just think of projects such as SETI@Home and Folding@Home.
Kind regards
Jens Buysse
Answered by
Dr Jens Buysse
Computer Science, Applied Informatics
Jozef Kluyskensstraat 2 B-9000 Ghent
http://www.hogent.be/
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