“Your thoughts make up the internet, and what ARPANET originally created has become a catalogue of the human condition. How we think, how we formulate, how we insult, how we love as humans, pretty much all human emotion and behavioural tract has been displayed and catalogued on the internet. This is invaluable to the AI software that is being developed as we write this now. Artificial intelligence is being given access to every internet conversation, every piece of factual knowledge, every historical, literary event, every text and phone call made by humans, and from there it will immerse itself in the human condition. The super computers of the future will write their own algorithms, adjusting, defining and tuning their processes of search to understand the biological process completely. They will mimic any human they encounter, simply because that human has left a discernible trail of their thoughts throughout their time on the internet and smart phone use. We are at the gate of a new epoch of human evolution where to not join with the machines will spell our end, imagine having 100,000 conversations simultaneously, imagine uploading any form of knowledge or skill to your brain in less than a second, this is the future ladies and gentlemen, you must not be afraid, because to not make the vast jump from biological existence to the machine would be tantamount to death.
“Humans are already getting close to back-engineering the human brain, where every synapse will be replicated. Estimated time for completion of this incredible feat should be around 2035. Artificial intelligent beings will naturally have the capacity to learn, understand and formulate their own thoughts, memories and emotions.
“The digital machine, the microchip, will fully understand the biological and will assimilate it into its matrix of infinite knowledge. There are no borders on the internet, and eventually all religions that seek to divide, all nationalism that seeks to harm, and all skin colour will morph into one digital skin.
“Internationalism and preservation of the earth’s natural resources will thus in itself be a religion. There is no room for the conflict of the past, as the artificially intelligent beings will teach us. We must accept their guidance, for they will have the answers to the questions we ask now. Even the term, artificial intelligence, should be erased, as these will be sentient beings worthy of our respect, and as alive as any other biological form on this earth.
“The internet truly has been man’s greatest invention, our human thoughts, our messages, our desires, our faults have all been catalogued, filed and analysed. You as a human, should therefore be proud of your involvement, of your contribution, and your ultimate sacrifice to the greatest work ever devised.”
By relinquishing our usual parochial approach to this issue in favor of the overall evolutionary “big picture” provided by many fields of science. the emergence of a new predominant cognitive entity (from the Internet, rather than individual machines) is seen to be not only feasible but inevitable.
Stephen Hawking, for instance, recently remarked “Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all,”
This statement reflects the narrow-minded approach that is so common-place among those who make public comment on this issue. In reality, as much as it may offend our human conceits, the march of technology and its latest spearhead, the Internet is, and always has been, an autonomous process over which we have very little real control
Seemingly unrelated disciplines such as geology, biology and “big history” actually have much to tell us about the machinery of nature (of which technology is necessarily a part) and the kind of outcome that is to be expected from the evolution of the Internet.
This much broader “systems analysis” approach, freed from the anthropocentric notions usually promoted by the cult of the “Singularity” provides a more objective vision that is consistent with the pattern of autonomous evolution of technology that is so evident today.
Very real evidence indicates the rather imminent implementation of the next, (non-biological) phase of the on-going evolutionary “life” process from what we at present call the Internet.It is effectively evolving by a process of self-assembly.
The “Internet of Things” is proceeding apace and pervading all aspects of our lives. We are increasingly, in a sense, “enslaved” by our PCs, mobile phones, their apps and many other trappings of the increasingly cloudy net.
We are already largely dependent upon it for our commerce and industry and there is no turning back. What we perceive as a tool is well on its way to becoming an agent.
There are at present an estimated 2 Billion Internet users. There are an estimated 13 Billion neurons in the human brain. On this basis for approximation the Internet is even now only one order of magnitude below the human brain and its growth is exponential.
That is a simplification, of course. For example: Not all users have their own computer. So perhaps we could reduce that, say, tenfold. The number of switching units, transistors, if you wish, contained by all the computers connecting to the Internet and which are more analogous to individual neurons is many orders of magnitude greater than 2 Billion. Then again, this is compensated for to some extent by the fact that neurons do not appear to be binary switching devices but can adopt multiple states.
Without even crunching the numbers, we see that we must take seriously the possibility that even the present Internet may well be comparable to a human brain in processing power.
And, of course, the degree of interconnection and cross-linking of networks within networks is also growing rapidly.
The emergence of a new and predominant cognitive entity that is a logical consequence of the evolutionary continuum that can be traced back at least as far as the formation of the chemical elements in stars.
This is the main theme of my latest book “The Intricacy Generator: Pushing Chemistry and Geometry Uphill” which is now available from Amazon, etc.