Give time to develop artificial brain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project for those too young to remember.

Or maybe "GOLEM XIV" by Stanisław Lem, where a military computer stops doing work for military because he (it?) considers war stupid.

Colossus was monolithic.

But writers have been talking about the "singularity" of true A.I. for many years.

I started "Accelerondo",as an example of one of those stories, but the author so screwed up what Austrian economics is that I couldn't finish it.

I always preferred Spider Robinsons AI, Solace, from the Callahans series. What better than an AI that "possesses" a Mac and can clear a room with bad puns, or can do a "wetware" interface by sticking a SCSI cable into your mouth.

*edit* Jezuch I thought I had gotten my hands on nearly every Stanislaw Lem book, thanks for letting me know I was wrong. Looking forward to hunting that one down now. */edit*

"Skynet" (from the Terminator movie franchise) was a worldwide network of computers. But time travel is still waiting for us to build a black-hole torus. Might be a few years after the computers take over. But hey, we'll have killed ourselves off pretty well by then.

Nah, there is an time traveling Irish bartender with his madam wife watching out for us :)

Also has shades of William Gibson's Neuromancer to it. Worldwide network of computers turning into a form of omnipresent super-intelligence. The only missing element is a real person immortalising themselves by having their entire brain's contents exist on the network. But hey... let's assume they get this right and manage to emulate the brain accurately... will this be like a child that has to be raised/taught/educated?

And, assuming they get it right, will it eventually become self aware and start searching for some purpose in life. Of course, it will totally lack things like clinical depression and sugar addiction and all manner of physical things that would affect its thinking.

"I can't let you do that, Dave."

... skip forward ...

"Daisy, Daisy... give me your answer truuue..."

... and while I'm at it ...

"Greetings Professor Falken. Would you like to play a game of chess?" "Would you like to play Global Thermo-nuclear War?"

Quoting:But writers have been talking about the "singularity" of true A.I. for many years.

And M$ has taken notice. http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/