When machines dream

Edge.com - DREAM-LOGIC, THE INTERNET AND ARTIFICIAL THOUGHT By David Gelernter

What does it mean to think? Can machines think, or only humans? These questions have obsessed computer science since the 1950s, and grow more important every day as the internet canopy closes over our heads, leaving us in the pregnant half-light of the cybersphere. Taken as a whole, the net is a startlingly complex collection of computers (like brain cells) that are densely interconnected (as brain cells are). And the net grows at many million points simultaneously, like a living (or more-than-living?) organism. It's only natural to wonder whether the internet will one day start to think for itself.

(Or is it thinking already?)

These questions are important not only to the internet but to each individual computer. Computers grow more powerful all the time. Today, programs that are guided not just by calculations but by good guesses are important throughout the software landscape. They are examples of applied artificial intelligence — and the ultimate goal of artificial intelligence is to build a mind out of software, a thinking computer — a machine with human-like (or super-human) intelligence.

In a way these possibilities are frightening, or at least thought-provoking. But after all, human intelligence is the most valuable stuff in the cosmos, and we are always running short. A computer-created increase in the world-wide intelligence supply would be welcome, to say the least.

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