Scary thought...

[Howard]

What if, in the near future or something, processors would have much more processing power than now, that they became sentient? Having to process crap all day, never given a reboot, stuck in a Hell-hot case... sigh

 

[snow patrol]

Well, let's just pray that, when the time comes, CPU manufacturers don't decide to equip their chips with 30mm cannons

 

[Mday]

processors themselves?

when they lose power, they are just some useless paper weight. meaning, they weigh so little...

 

[hungrypete]

we'll have to start manufacturing them in Mexico so they will be willing to work under horrible conditions with little or no compensation....

 

[Howard]

OMG

You guys are so mean! (icon taking over)

/me pets Duron

 

[EvilCoconut]

ROFL

 

[etech]

That's the danger of the web and distributed computing. It's takes a critical mass of interconnections for a computer to become sentient. As more and more people connect and start doing distributed the closer the web is to becoming sentient.

Where are you Mike?
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress Robert Heinlein

 

[Blackhawk2]

They can't become sentient. They only understand 1 and 0, on or off. Its unrealistic to think an inorganic machine could become sentient, they do not have a mind of their own, programmers program ever action into your computer, all this talk about computers making up their own mind is BS. Today many people think a computer is thinking when it randomly chooses an option that was pre-programmed into it, aka a random selection from a list. <*sarcasm on*>Wow what a scientific acheivment<*sarcasm off*>

Now on the other hand organic computers with organic minds might become sentient, but then probably only to the extent of a bug being conscious of its actions.

 

[Soccerman]

:-O

well yeah personally I think it's impossible, becuase you need the software which is the &quot;mind&quot; and the CPU is what it runs on like a &quot;brain&quot;!

well that's how I think of it!

so far, we really have no clue as to how to create a sentient program, either becuase we lack the programming ability (maybe the code would be WAY to complex?), or because we don't have enough computing power to get anywhere near sentience.. (spelling's not right on that...)

BUT this made me think of something new.. a Distributed consciousness! cool idea? basically every participant computer runs the same software, which works while the computer is on the net, to contribute to running the software that is required for consciousness (which as above, I theorize that the complexety would require insane amounts of computer power).