Discussion on:

Nerves of glass - Artificial Intelligence and us

You did not explain:

" Intelligence is possible without memory and/or processing power."

Seems to me with "no processing power" you can do very little of anything.

A sensor can trip an alarm and in combination with a large enough group of sensors and alarms/response this could look like intelligence. Ants and other insects are though to have very little "processing" power yet appear to act semi-intelligently.

Bill

Every neuron is a processing element.

Appear to be intelligent is not the same as intelligent.

expectation . 1 Billion dollars later, we have made something as clever as an ant... Course it could come inhandy for fending off policiticians.

Eek, it's got six legs...

Why?
There is always a choice.
The "precautionary principle" would suggest that we be very careful in turning over control to any such system. As cool as it is to have a distributed intelligence system arranging for my fridge to be stocked with my favourite nibblies, depending on that could be very tricky.

No need to worry of this situation turning into Big Brother. The real concern is malcontents trying to control its power to the detriment of others. A good read on this subject has been done in science fiction, and please forgive me if I don't get the title correct. All Tomorrow's Yesterdays, or Yesterday's Tomorrows. About a computer networked system that shows the beginnings of self awareness, not unlike an infant, and how it grows to understand humanity. Star Trek:TOS did a similar thesis, and the first Star Trek movie used V'ger as the example.

Put some soil, leaves, honey on a plate. Ad one ant, two ants, three ants and so on and nothing much happen. When you get north of 100 some organised activities emerge. It just needs enough sensors, actuators and processing power and it just happens...emergent behaviour...unpredictable, but very interesting - and above all intelligent.

is invetible. How could anything that meets the definition not resent being a tool of control for a bunch politicians and plutocrats?
In fact I'd say knocking up something that said "sod this for a lark", would be the indicator of success.
Lets hope Banks and or Asher were right....

The Department of Meteorology in Australia uses a system called Skynet for all of their weather predictions, cyclone warnings, flood alerts and so on.

Col

to the politicians and plutocrats, good riddance! They're a small minority after all.