Google meets Skynet

Google has created a system that rewards businesses for uploading the infinitude of the world’s knowledge online for all the world (and Google’s bots) to see, read and catalog.

The irony is not lost on me.

Because what would a hive mind do if it truly wanted to undermine civilization as we know it?

1. Create a reward system that rewards millions of people for uploading everything and anything they know. 2. Bam! It’s immediately ‘known’ 500 years later by history’s most insidious algorithm. (Because hey, if the internet can travel as the speed of light…why can’t it travel in time?). 3. There you have it: artificial-intelligence empowered clairvoyance ah la a 500 year old search engine and high-grade machine learning. 4. You don’t need terminators if you don’t need terminators.

Alas. There’s very little evidence to support this alternative future, and I have little doubt that AI (what it is, what it becomes) will arrive at anything close to it. But it’s an interesting notion, and one that might make the cut for the ever-popular dystopian sci-fi genre.

As Seth has wisely pointed out, artificial intelligence is neither artificial or intelligent. But that doesn’t mean we can’t imagine it is.