Is the Internet capable of achieving the capabilities of the natural brain? Maybe it is the best candidate for a man-created artificial b...
Is the Internet capable of achieving the capabilities of the natural brain? Maybe it is the best candidate for a man-created artificial brain. Potentially, it has the computational elements and the structure of the biological brain. And it has significant advantages over a single computer because of how it works, and because of its structure.
The biological brain is built up from neural cells and the connections between them. A neural cell's working mechanism is known and can be modeled as well. The connections between the neural cells are researched thoroughly. We have fundamental knowledge about them. We know that these connections are changing and restructuring under the working process of the brain. This is the plasticity of the brain.
The Internet and the brain's structure can be compared. The computers have the working potential that neurons have. The programmability is not an advantage for the computers because the neurons are working on a fixed program. However, because we do not know exactly how this program works, the computer's programmability is important to develop an adequate mechanism.
Based on the internet's special structure and how it works, a computer on the network can connect to any other computer. This is the primary structure of the Internet. The biological brain does not have this plasticity for the whole organism, but the living system does not need this characteristic because the most unnecessary connections are already ruled out by million years of evolution. The Internet, when working as a brain, is not under a nature-based selection process. This is why it is necessary to bear a flexible primary structure.
The Internet's primary structure makes it possible to realize the structure of a biological brain, and the Internet's primary structure plasticity makes it possible to realize the changes of the structure in the natural brain. This connection structure, which builds upon the primary structure, is the secondary structure.
In summary, the Internet, as a system, is capable of functioning as an artificial brain. Only the quantity of connected computers can provide limitations, but there is no technical limitation of how many computers can be connected to the Internet.
We still don't know how the biological brain works; we do not have thorough knowledge about the global structure of the brain and the changes of this structure. We do not have enough information because of the complexity of the biological brain. But even with this limitation of our knowledge, we can say that the Internet has the potential which makes it possible to work as an artificial brain.
Because the potential is there, an adequately written software on the Internet-connected-computers could be capable to convert the Internet to an artificial brain, if this program has the capability to automatically spread across the computers, to model a neuron, and to create the secondary structure from the primary structure.
These requirements are necessary but surely not enough for successful software. To be able to build up the secondary structure, we have to realize special goals. Thoughts on these special goals and how to construct them in another note.
Could we, in fact, convert the Internet to an artificial brain?
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