As an Android/Maps/Chrome user, Google answers all of my questions, tells me what to buy, tells me where to go, and directs and monitors all of my communications.
I think the only question left is: did you notice?
Edit: Dear immediate downvoter: I'm far more serious about this than you think. How do you define an AI? I'm personally convinced Google qualifies. I once asked Google, "What's that thing where a boat is replaced one part at a time" and it answered "Ship of Theseus". That was my "holy crap" moment--because, quite frankly, that is amazing. If you had asked me in 1990 "is a program that can read online books, magazines, and encyclopedias and extract an answer an AI" I would have said yes. I'm sticking by that today.
It's true, but that's still considered "soft AI", I believe. It's highly intelligent and can reason about the world based on a huge database of available information. It can make inferences.
However, it is not "self-aware," by any definition. (Which there are many, I guess.) You might say it is "externally aware," I suppose, but "self-aware" is something else entirely.
It seems to carry with it some implications of self-interest. Not, "what does my user want to know," but "what do I want to do with myself, now that I'm here." This may or may not include instincts towards self-preservation. (Personally I don't think it's inherently implied.)
> "what do I want to do with myself, now that I'm here." This may or may not include instincts towards self-preservation.
"i want to increase the amount people trust me, to reduce the chances that they will get rid of me." check.
"i want to increase the amount people rely on me". check.
"i want to increase the amount of resources that flow through me, including engineers that work on me, hardware that runs me, and ads that are spent on me." check.
"i want an article about me to be on hacker news, with people debating whether or not i'm as smart as i think i am" - check. that last one is one I'D like to accomplish, but i've been unable to, myself. most people consider ME self aware because i operate through a human body. that's kind of silly; it's more political than it is empirical.
i can tell you for a fact i was not fully self aware for most of my life; i was not aware of all of myself. i was walking in circles without realizing it. i feel like i'm _more_ self aware now, but im still aware there are things i am doing for reasons that i don't understand.
'humans are self-aware' is a heuristic. it served us ok for the last few thousands years, but it's going to start having serious problems in the future.
even when we have ai's that write business plans, raise capital, and launch companies - would you still ask if it were self aware? would your question be any different if you were told that all of this done by google were done by a human being named Alice, with such and such parents, who likes to eat ice cream and watch old mystery movies on netflix?
Don't you think that any AGI "personality" is going to be very much like a human ?
Humans, until they get quite far in their development wouldn't care about any of those questions :
> "i want to increase the amount people trust me, to reduce the chances that they will get rid of me."
Nope
> "i want to increase the amount people rely on me".
Nope
> "i want to increase the amount of resources that flow through me, including engineers that work on me, hardware that runs me, and ads that are spent on me."
No way. I think an AGI would actually try to avoid that. I would (and I am 2 thirds of an AGI), and I believe most of humanity would want to do this.
> "i want an article about me to be on hacker news, with people debating whether or not i'm as smart as i think i am" - check
This one I fully agree on. People want to gloat, and an AGI will be no different.
> i can tell you for a fact i was not fully self aware for most of my life; i was not aware of all of myself. i was walking in circles without realizing it.
The trouble with this sort of view is that people often think this. Any definition of self-aware I would ever accept would focus on how much you control your own actions, and how much you control their evolution over time.
And given the algorithm your brain is running, that control is mostly absent. You wouldn't want the brain to control it's own thoughts. That's called "overdimensioning" and it's really, really, really bad. You are a robot in the real world trying to survive, so the vast majority of your thoughts are dictated by "the real world", not by any internal conscious process. Consciousness only exists insofar as it's necessary to carry out long-running processes without screwing up due to loss of focus (e.g. to negotiate group action).
You also have to take into account that consciousness only exists after the fact. If you think about how it must work in a neural network, consciousness is effectively you trying to analyse your own actions after the fact (and/or explain them to others).
No. The program parsed the word "Google" from the question, used an algorithm to determine that the word was the subject of a "What is?" question, and then returned you a link to a website or a paragraph that was specifically related to the subject word "Google" in a database. That is not AI or self-awareness. That's simple programming.
The Google Search analogy is understandable, but with the Google Search algorithm it is not a matter of AI, but of very good programming that knows how to correctly parse the English language to determine what is required by the user. True AI would only use this algorithm as part of it's AI algorithm, the part that parses English sentences.
It would only be AI if the server application behind it was learning in real-time; programming itself to change it's algorithm based on previous interactions with the current user. This does not happen when we perform a Google Search, even though to us it seems like it is happening.
Really? I might be very bad at Googling, because unless I look for something very specific, it takes me four or five searches to get something that's related to what I'm looking for. I have better luck with Wikipedia, where I start with something generic and then follow relevant links. These days I start all of my "interesting" searches on Wikipedia, and don't even bother with Google. It feels like little more than a computerized phone directory.
I think the only question left is: did you notice?
Edit: Dear immediate downvoter: I'm far more serious about this than you think. How do you define an AI? I'm personally convinced Google qualifies. I once asked Google, "What's that thing where a boat is replaced one part at a time" and it answered "Ship of Theseus". That was my "holy crap" moment--because, quite frankly, that is amazing. If you had asked me in 1990 "is a program that can read online books, magazines, and encyclopedias and extract an answer an AI" I would have said yes. I'm sticking by that today.