Data That Knows Itself

Self-aware Software Will Be an Important Trend in the Coming Years – and It’s Tricky

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For a long time, humans believed they were the only species blessed with self awareness. Chimpanzees and orangutans soon planted a seed of self doubt. But now, seeing as we are developing robots in our own image, machines are already beginning to have some sense of self awareness.

Like much else with technology, this, too, is a double edged sword. Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have been among those who’ve warned the world again and again that humans are probably shooting themselves in the foot with their advances in artificial intelligence. One only need think of Skynet, the fictional neural net-based conscious group mind and artificial general intelligence system that features centrally in the Terminator franchise and serves as the franchise’s main antagonist. It gains self-aw