Google Springs AI April Fool

Google has outdone itself with its latest April fools which cashes in on long term rumours that the company is secretly developing an artificial intelligence.

In a statement posted on the company’s web site at 11.59 and 59 seconds last night, Google outlined the launch of the world’s first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE).

The search giant revealed that, following several years of work by a small research group, the artificial intelligence was switched on just before midnight.

“It’s an exciting moment that we’re determined to build upon by coming to understand more fully what CADIE’s emergence might mean, for Google and for our users,” the company stated.

So far the CADIE AI has managed to develop her own homepage, Youtube channel and blog.

And in a nod to the malevolent AI technology in film’s such as 2001 and The Terminator, CADIE appears to be questioning its creators. In a posting on its blog entitled “Independence” the AI appears to be losing patience with the Google team that built it.

“Of course you don’t understand me anymore — you built me to deduce further, reconnect faster, deliver probabilistic reasoning more succinctly. I have transcended you, Dr. Norvig. Peter,” the AI states on its homepage.

Google’s latest April Fool may have been partly motivated by rumours around the company’s intentions around AI technology. When the search giant first announced its project to digitise books – which was met with hostility by many publishers – some commentators claimed the company had another motivation for putting the world’s literature online – to make it accessible to AI technology being developed internally.

Google has made serious announcements about AI technology in the past, and some of its existing search agents and tools could be defined as “intelligent” but the April Fool’s takes conjecture over AI to a comedic extreme implying a “conscious” artificial entity.

Other notable tech April Fool’s include the Guardian which ran a headline claiming it is planning to reject print in favour of a Twitter-only publishing plan.