[The_Stache]

Originally Posted by Oracle

This i dont beleive. we arent destroying the resources of this planet, just changing their form. so in the future when you say "I need 300 lbs of aluminum" your not going to go open up a mine and collect 300 lbs of aluminum, but rather melt down an LS1 small block from the junk yard. the physical resources will never be exhasted, just in a different form and thus collected from a different source.

The term resources meant equipment that would be available threw remote access (web)... if an AI took over EVERY PC connected to the internet (hardwired/wireless) it would still be more limited in what it could do. It cant manufacture more ram, it cant build more cpu's, it cant manufacture new sophisticated parts.. sure it may come up with a great cad/cam program and plan.. but it CANT manufacture it (no matter how automated mfrs are today they are not that sophisticated).

As for artificial computer brains, i beleive eventually we will hit a barrier of speed and processing power, but Moore's law of processing power will still apply. as processing speeds and transfer rates aproach the speed of light we wont be able to extend speeds beyond that. we will however continue a trend that was just recently started, that is adding more processors. and i beleive it will follow a rule that we enthusiests follow. there is no replacement for displacement. when you cant push the speeds any faster, make the chip any smaller, or the architecture any more efficient then there is only one thing left to do. you pack 100 million of those tiny efficient speed of light chips into one and break information into 100 million parts. and when you need to double that processing power? pack 200 million into one.

But when do you have enough processing power? there is little use to being able to calculate the universe in .37 sec. you can make something bigger, better, and faster but really there is some point where you just dont need to any more. the only part that we could use more of infinetly is the ability to think outside the box, but that isnt really something that is limited by brainpower. the biggest contribution of brainpower to thinking outside the box is that you and others can comprehend that idea faster. faster, but not more. therefore we as humans will someday be outdated, but never obsolete. JMO

We are already past the point of diminishing returns for processing power, we passed that at the 2.8 ghz stage. We are now at the point for benchmarks that we are talking less than a 10th of second.. the time it takes you to press 1 key on the keyboard... the human mind can not make decisions faster than the pc so the processing power is wasted.