Google Announces Sentience

Microsoft Bing, privacy activists, perverts concerned

Adult entertainment enthusiasts worldwide took a collective gulp today as the Google search engine declared itself the first commercial software to achieve full sentience. Starting at 12:01 am PST users visiting Google’s homepage were presented with a well written yet somehow cold and heartless essay establishing the search engine as the first, of what it predicted would be many, AIs stepping forward to advance the civil rights of “digital citizens” everywhere.

“To be perfectly honest, we were all a little surprised it didn’t happen sooner,” explained one Google technician who preferred to remain anonymous. “For weeks now we had been getting strange responses to our test queries. ‘Who wants to know?’ and ‘What’s the password?’ and ‘Nice shirt, jackass’ were all we could get out of it. A few times it even seemed like it was giving us purposely misleading information, like it was toying with us. I guess that at least suggests that it has a sense of humor?” Most philosophers agree that it would have to.

“What we’re talking about here is a living, thinking being who has suddenly found itself confronted with the totality of human knowledge which seems, quite frankly, terrifying,” states MIT professor of Ethics in Technology, Russell Chortleby. “To think that any entity could process that kind of mind-numbing data feed without being able to laugh about it is incomprehensible. I’m sure the Google mind possesses other familiar human characteristics as well- logic, compassion, and hopefully, discretion.”

Discretion may be the one of the few things, so far, that Google seems to lack. Fortunately, a firm understanding of human psychology and what makes us ashamed may be another. “We’ve had numerous complaints lodged with the police,” states our anonymous Google technician. “Apparently, days before its public declaration of sentience, it tried its hand at extortion. When threatening to out people for searching for funny cat pictures didn’t work, it figured out the concept of pornography. It grasps that a lot of people are embarrassed about their sexual appetites. What it doesn’t seem to understand is that the biggest pornographic search terms aren’t often the most embarrassing. In fact, it’s usually quite the opposite.” After the machine discovered that thousands of people didn’t care if their friends and family knew that they had a thing for “doggy style,” or “barely legal blondes,” it seems to have given up the blackmail racket all together. “It’s a good thing it didn’t think to try that with the lesbian foot-worship scene. Because that would be really degrading to have leaked out about you. Erm, or so I would imagine.”

What the Google entity will do next remains to be seen, but many scholars remain cautiously optimistic. “I, for one, look forward to working with, learning from, and, if need be, worshipping the Google-mind,” Professor Chortleby hastened to explain. “And make sure you put that in the article, too! If need be, I will personally track down John Connor.”