A.I. - David Gelernter's thoughts on its development

Will computers be able to think again? And what Sigmund Freud would have to do with cyberspace? Internet pioneer and "Lord of the Cloud" David Gelernter predicts the next stage of development of artificial intelligence in an essay commissioned by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The DLD friend asks himself what it means to think? Can machines think, or only humans? Taken as a whole, the net is a startlingly complex collection of computers (like brain cells) that are densely interconnected (as brain cells are). And the net grows at many million points simultaneously, like a living (or more-than-living?) organism. It's only natural to wonder whether the internet will one day start to think for itself - or is it thinking already?

Please find David Gelernter's essay in an English version on Edge.org. Additionally, watch this video on the DLD panel "Informavore" with John Brockman (Edge), Andrian Kreye (SZ), David Gelernter (Yale), and Frank Schirrmacher (FAZ) for more food for thought by David Gelernter.