I used to hang out on the AI forums when I was in high school... Really this is just a collection of facts -- I think they call it a knowledge system -- it is so far away from consciousness... A computer program is totally harmless -- you just unplug the thing... Unless it's designed with malicious intent -- like an AI virus would be cool ;) There are viruses that can morph themselves into new viruses to avoid detection. How about an intelligent virus that communicates with its brain remotely -- to decide how to infect even more machines... I'm sure this is coming -- if not already in existance.
This guy at the Players Ball was telling me about his buddies that accidentally hacked AT&T and shut down their entire phone system ehehe... And I remember reading that some hackers coming in through China almost shut down California's power system. Humans are way more dangerous than computers. Personally I think it would be fun to code ICQ AI bot babes to make some cash... I'll have to look into that ;)
Anyway no need to worry about these AI programs -- they really can't come up w/ ideas or become aware of their existance -- I'm sure it will be decades before man creates life inside a machine. Sounds more like Short Circuit or War Games to me than Clockwork Orange ahahha...
My friend Fred told me they actually were working on a computer program in the 60's (he worked for the company) to do just exactly what the computer in the War Games film was doing. They were gathering information about the way different groups of people would react in different situations -- and based on that and a bunch of other data they could construct all sorts of battle, disaster, and apocolyptic scenarios... and that was the 60's -- I'd imagine that sort of technology is very very advanced now.
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...from the nectar of the Bone flows all that clicks...