Could machines have become self-aware without our knowing it? – George Musser Aeon Essays

Usually when people imagine a self-aware machine, they picture a device that emerges through deliberate effort and that then makes its presence known quickly, loudly, and (in most scenarios) disastrously. Even if its inventors have the presence of mind not to wire it into the nuclear missile launch system, the artificial intelligence will soon vault past our capacity to understand and control it. If we're lucky, the new machine will simply break up with us, like the operating system in the movie Her. If not, it might decide not to open the pod bay doors to let us back into the spaceship. Regardless, the key point is that when an artificial intelligence wakes up, we'll know. But who's to say machines don't already have minds? What if they take unexpected forms, such as networks that have achieved a group-level consciousness? What if artificial intelligence is so unfamiliar that we have a hard time recognising it?