Military AI Could Rule the Internet

As if it wasn't bad enough for the military to muck about with mind control, they're also bent on creating an online, self-teaching artificial intelligence.

Hasn't anyone in the Pentagon watched The Terminator?

Of the various possible types of AI, the "most revolutionary would be an intelligent machine that uses the Internet to train," write the authors of a military-commissioned National Research Council report on emerging cognitive neuroscience. With so much information online and constantly updated, "If a system that reasoned like a human being could be achieved, there would be no limit to augmenting its capabilities."

Skynet, anyone? What self-respecting, self-sufficient AI wouldn't see CO2-spewing humans as a threat to its existence?

Okay, I'm being hyperbolic. But there is something vaguely creepy about the idea of greater-than-human artificial intelligence unleashed on the Internet by the military. Fortunately, as the authors note, "Many efforts, large and small, to reach this goal have not yet succeeded" -- perhaps because natural intelligence is still such a mystery to us.