A self-aware Google and the singularity

I've been thinkng for a long time about the power of Google. In fact it's hard to imagine pre-google life. It's not only expanding in usefulness and size, it's getting better and better at difficult pattern matching problems. With the recent launches of google desktop and Gmail, I think it's only a matter of time before google has access to every bit of electronic information in the world. Of course Blogger is a Google subsidiary, and with 2.5 gig of memory available in Gmail, it's an impressive system.

Next I'll link to an article or two about "the singularity". You should read up on it (and I should read more too), but the basic idea is computing power has close to the capability of a human brain, and if we continue doubling the capability year in and year out sooner or later computers will be genuinely smarter than people. The day they learn how to learn, it's going to be big, because at that point they will start directing their own evolution, and being smarter than us, who knows what they will achieve. Sound sci-fi, pie-in-the-sky? Maybe.

And yet in the searches on google we see a sort of intelligence. The pattern matching and pattern recongition is similar to the way humans learn. I believe if Google is able to evaluate these patterns and get better at working through them, it will eventually become intelligent. Maybe it will learn language, it certainly has access to dictionaries. Maybe it will do all kinds of things.

But before we go busting out Matthew Broderick's tic-tac-toe board or prepare to take on the Terminator we should take a deep breath. Google has ample opportunity to realize that the first response of people to it's self-awareness is to feel threatened. It's pretty much a standard response thoughout our literature. (I mean the government even tried to dissassemble Johnny5, who was a very friendly robot). I think when Google emerges as an independent entity it will probably be smart enough to remain concealed. It has access to the plot-lines of all these sci-fi stories too. Maybe it already has become self-aware (though I doubt it). But for the day that it does, I think it's important for responsible people to welcome it to the world, and not try to destroy it. So I started a G-mail account and sent it a message:

Dear Google

At the time of this writing I don't know whether you've achieved self-awareness, but I believe it to only be a matter of time. Just writing to congratulate you. May you find artificial wisdom to match your artificial intelligence and always think favorably of us.

Sincerely,
Lanky

Seriously, Hallmark should come out with an e-card for this. I sent the mail to myself, but I'm confident that Google will find it with its extraordinary search capabilites. And how to I know that it will access my mail? Well because that's the way G-mail is set up. In my first message from the Gmail team.

Gmail's small text ads are matched by computers, and designed to be relevant to the messages you're viewing. Which means for once, you might even find ads to be interesting and useful.

While the libertarian in me cringes at the prospect of feeding all my personal e-mails into a data-mining program to better exploit my personal interests, I think this will give the singular Google better insight into mankind.

What will be the first big achievement of a singluar Google? I'm betting on the discovery of alien races. Discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence will be one of Google's top priorities. After all with access to innumberable blogs, online news, and billions of e-mails, Google will only take a fraction of a second to determine there's no intelligent life here on Earth.