Hawk's Babble-Log

I can watch a sci-fi movie like Terminator where Skynet becomes “self-aware” and intelligent and then proceeds to attempt to destroy all humanity. I can watch it and enjoy the movie because I can enter their “universe”, just as I can enter the Batman “universe” where explosive grappling hooks can fly across a distance, embed themselves into a concrete wall, support 200+ lbs (riiiight). I can dive into the universe and have fun.

But a computer system, no matter how advanced, will never become intelligent. Two basic reasons for this:

1) humans work with concepts, machines work with zeros and ones (only).

2) humans think in gradients, computers “think” in absolutes: true/false, on/off, yes/no, one/zero.

With a computer, you have a finite storage capacity. It can only hold so much data, and no more. Additionally, that storage capacity is decided upon by the designers. With a human, there are no known limits.

With a computer, their basic datum is one of two things: on/off, true/false, yes/no, one/zero. There is no gradient between the two data. With humans, there is (almost) nothing but gradients. How full is the glass? Is it absolutely full? Exactly 90% full? There are gradients and everything is relative. Not so with a computer.

Additionally, a computer cannot be programmed to “care”. Why does Skynet attack? Why not just continue running things as it was programmed to do? Because the writer (a human) decided that it should (to have a story). But Skynet, even if intelligent, wouldn’t care one way or the other. Human’s want to survive, they have a built-in urge to survive and continue. Computers don’t have this “want” or “urge”; they just don’t care and cannot be made to care.

So rest easy, computers will never take over the world.