Comment by monk.e.boy on Ghosts in the Machine · 2008-06-18T16:24:18.000Z · LW · GW

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