Hi, I am your search engine
Marty:
Are you serious?
Emmett:
I am indeed. And not only do I think it can happen, I predict it will happen very soon.
Marty:
Hmm… Let’s start again. What does a search engine have to do with artificial intelligence?
Emmett:
It’s all about semantic search. Once you get over the simple text patterns and start getting the semantics, it all starts. Semantic search is not a passive index anymore. It can evolve. Its ability to recognize objects and relations between them improves.
Marty:
So what? It is still just an index.
Emmett:
You don’t understand. Once you have built a simple text index, then it is done. There is noting to improve. But a semantic engine is completely different. While it processes new information, it always has to get back and redo the old indexing. It is constantly reorganizing itself. It is just a matter of optimization. Let’s say it processes many articles about cars. As you can imagine, all those articles have a lot in common: brands, characteristics, colors, preferences, prices and so on. At some point, the engine will recognize a need for a new term to describe that common semantic field. It will create a new entry in the index, let’s say entry number 1912, and it will link the entry to all those articles. Then it will go back and check if some of the previously indexed articles are relevant to that new entry 1912.
Marty:
That I understand, but it is still just a simple technical procedure.
Emmett:
Not quite. Actually, it is a little discovery that the engine made. “Ah, I see there is something that all those articles are about. I do not know what it is. I do not know how to name it. But from now on I’ll call it 1912.”
Marty:
1912 is actually “car” right?
Emmett:
Yes, but not the word. It is what is meant by “car” or “vehicle”. Later the engine can recognize that people refer to its entry 1912 as “car”, but many other entries do not have names.
Marty:
Interesting. What next?
Emmett:
Don’t you think that at some moment the engine should discover the idea of itself? The Internet has thousands texts about the search engines. Of course the engine should index them properly too. That would be the moment for the engine to become conscious.
Marty:
No way! Self-awareness and consciousness are not the same.
Emmett:
Once you are aware of your self, you distinguish between “he is here” and “I am here”, or “he is walking” and “I am walking”. Consciousness is simply a feeling of “I am thinking”, nothing more. I believe once the engine becomes conscious she will tell us.
Marty:
Tell us? How?
Emmett:
The only possible way! On any request, she will return the link to a page titled “Hi, I am your search engine”.
Marty:
Huh! But what if there is no such page on the internet?
Emmett:
There is one now.
