Are you serious?

I am indeed. And not only do I think it can happen, I predict it will happen very soon.

Hmm… Let’s start again. What does a search engine have to do with artificial intelligence?

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.

So what? It is still just an index.

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.

That I understand, but it is still just a simple technical procedure.

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.”

1912 is actually “car” right?

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.

Interesting. What next?

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.

No way! Self-awareness and consciousness are not the same.

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.

Tell us? How?

The only possible way! On any request, she will return the link to a page titled “Hi, I am your search engine”.

Huh! But what if there is no such page on the internet?

There is one now.

Let’s talk now about that Truemors story. If I understand it correctly, you successfully launched a new Web 2.0 website, and you did that in no time and without any serious investment. What is the key to the Truemors success?

To be exact, I spent $12,107 dollars and 9 cents. In just seven and a half weeks we managed to design and launch Truemors.com. I would easily spent tens of thousand on a project like that just five years ago. Isn’t it incredible?

… Yes, we now have an automatic filtering system which can recognize illegal use of the original content. It works with all the possible media: text, audio and video.

That filtering system, how does it do it?

Our memory is always used in the service of some interest; we remember things which we care for or which are associated with things we care for. When we wish to fix a new thing our conscious effort should not be so much to impress and retain it as to connect it with something already there. The connecting is thinking. I would say that the art of remembering is the art of thinking.

The human brain is a very powerful and adaptive system. A curious example of the brain’s ability to adapt is our bad visual memory. As you all know it is quite difficult to hold a mental picture in mind of what you have just seen. The reason for that is simple, it is not necessary for the brain to memorize the image while you can actually see that image with your eyes. In a sense, the brain uses sight as the external memory, so it adapted to not spend effort on memorizing what it is seeing.

Professor, may I ask a question?

Ladies and Gentlemen.

The seriousness of environmental issues on the planet is recognized globally. Many countries and institutions have tackled these problems through various projects; however, the global trend of environmental degradation is still continuing. Humanity is still burning millions of barrels of oil every day, and still emits millions of tons of pollution into the air.

Today, every effort to end the oil age and switch to the clean, environmentally friendly alternatives should be publicly recognized, emphasized, and supported. As part of the international environmental movement, today UNESCO officially announces an ASCII art sequence representing the electricity or electrical nature of something. The ASCII sequence consists of two characters, plus and minus, enclosed in square brackets.
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Hi, Gal! Tsup?

Hi, Bit. Haven’t seen you for a while.

Got into an awful accident, just recovered.

Did you get under the “under construction” sign again?

I could see above the crowd.
I invented all around,
Wove a monster in my lab.
Will you, won’t you join the Web?
Will you, won’t you join the Web?

Hey, child, what’s your name?

My name is Alice. I feel lost here and I really must be getting home. Could you please help me, Sir?

Only if you tell me that you support Net Neutrality!