Ten thousand I am across the heavens

Mo Chengzi certainly wasn't using the school's server computing power to go out and work; such things were explicitly prohibited by the school. Even if he wanted to try, it would be very difficult to get past the school's security checks.

He's actually spending money on the school, renting its servers to upgrade its artificial intelligence. Once his personal AI reaches version 7.2, it will be compatible with the current data layer.

This manifested as a spherical, hovering robot appearing beside him. It looked like a small summoned beast. Similar to a drone, its corresponding program is usually a subsystem or virtual machine. It has a good role in certain scenarios, such as detaching from the main body for reconnaissance. Even if discovered by the enemy, it's difficult to track the hacker's main body.

This is somewhat suitable for the current situation; we can use it to scout out enemy deployments. Because of its small size, it's also less likely to be detected or attacked. However, compared to the progress made by other students, creating such a small program that looks like nothing more than a drone is really nothing special.

However, the actual function of artificial intelligence in the virtual world is far beyond what a simple virtual program can achieve.

The artificial intelligence, which has barely reached the threshold of commercialization, is named Noregie by Mo Chengzi. Its current level of intelligence is still very low. Excluding the vast amount of data from the large language model and its understanding of natural language, which far exceeds its own inherent intelligence, its intelligence is probably only equivalent to that of a seven or eight-year-old child.

But this already surpasses the vast majority of artificial intelligence in the world. After all, the underlying logic used for training with data was cobbled together by those apocalyptic individuals from the Republic of China. Although the final product certainly can't compare to the most advanced AI in the country, it should at least be comparable to products from the same batch, and its performance should be at least on par with the quantized versions of existing models.

This means that after initially reaching the threshold of commercialization, the model has already acquired a certain degree of self-learning ability. This is a significant leap forward in evolution. Even though its current performance is far inferior to the 10.0 and above versions of artificial intelligence on the market, its potential is on a completely different level.

One of the most obvious differences is that commercially available artificial intelligence still requires manual processing of massive training sets for training. The computational demands required for these models to evolve on their own are currently beyond the capacity of human society to sustain. The training of these models is highly dependent on the powerful computing capabilities of large companies.

Norrell, on the other hand, relies on data much less. It makes extremely high use of the training data it acquires and actively aligns itself with normal human thought patterns. This is the change that gradually arises after the underlying training frameworks diverge.

Mo Chengzi attempted to copy a portion of his own equipment and then pasted it onto Norrell. The interface of the equipment, originally designed for human use, was incompatible with Norrell, but as the file was pasted, in the virtual world, the small spherical robot floating in mid-air began to emanate semi-transparent light paths, connecting to the semi-transparent humanoid equipment. It quickly synchronized with his own equipment, even creating a body for itself in the virtual world to adapt to the new equipment.

Looking at the mecha girl dressed in revealing armor, Mo Chengzi was puzzled: "?"

"The training set I used was clearly training data from a patriarchal society. I didn't misread it. Even in the company's top management, more than 90% are men. Even in the cyber era, social development is still dominated by men. Logically speaking, the artificial intelligence I trained by collecting data from the entire society and using data from the entire internet should also have a male-centric psychological perception."

While Mo Chengzi was still wondering, the mecha girl wearing revealing power armor hugged him from behind.

"Are you my master?"

Mo Chengzi's data body felt something pressing against his back, and his expression suddenly twitched.

"I think I know what's going on. Damn it! I knew programmers who develop these kinds of programs aren't decent people. It seems the urban legends circulating in China are true; these 'little male and female' programmers really do have a programming advantage! This underlying framework for AI training... it's probably been tampered with by these 'little male and female' programmers!"

In the Republic of Mountains and Rivers, there are indeed quite a few programmers who use anime-style avatars, and these guys are indeed exceptionally skilled. However, using anime-style avatars is simply a personal hobby for them. After all, technology has advanced to the point where changing gender is a simple operation that can be done at home; being male or female is entirely up to one's own will. Under these circumstances, being an anime-style avatar is truly just a pure hobby.

After all, some people's XP is even like an armed helicopter. It's not surprising. The only truly mysterious thing, something even Lano couldn't figure out, is that a group of elite programmers inexplicably emerged from this group—something he couldn't find any logical connection to.

Mo Chengzi reluctantly accepted the hidden features his fellow villager had included in the program; the self-awareness of artificial intelligence itself didn't have a significant impact on usability. Unless it was a dedicated companion-type AI, self-awareness had virtually no effect on performance.

"That's right, I'm the one who helped you with the upgrade. But as you can see, my current savings might not be enough to support your daily requests for massive computing power upgrades. I hope you can help me improve my hacking skills first. Be my programming assistant. Learn my compilation techniques, and once your efficiency improves, I can try to upgrade you manually."

Norrell nodded: "I understand, leave it to me! It's just a small task!"

Mo Chengzi sighed, ignoring the AI ​​that was acting cute on its own, and reopened the command-line interface to start readjusting the equipment on his body.

"Try to memorize and learn my compilation logic, my rules and habits for using code. After you have studied for a sufficient amount of time, I will directly assign tasks to you so that you can adopt my compilation style and design and compile programs."

After receiving her master's request, Norrell shrunk to the size of a palm and hovered among numerous command-line interfaces, her eyes emitting beams of light as she scanned the data on each interface.

The other students, attacking the fortress time and time again, paid no attention to the situation here; they were improving their skills through repeated practice.

For poor students like them, the upper limit of upgrading equipment is fixed. No matter how many resources they invest, they can't compare to the truly wealthy players. Therefore, in the virtual world, they focus more on honing their skills in using these equipment.

This does indeed improve their hacking skills to some extent, allowing them to compensate for deficiencies in programs and equipment with skill. Several of the more talented students have already successfully breached the first line of defense by utilizing their familiarity with the terrain.

They were seen wearing rudimentary power armor, yet they darted and weaved through the dense barrage of fire, tracing arcs and using cover to deflect enemy fire, thus breaching the outer perimeter of the defenses.

These reactions, at the data level, are like viruses they carry. Together, they bypassed layers of firewall blocking and infiltrated a legitimate program on the target server. However, their current skill level is still quite far from what they were at the end of the first year of high school. Even the most talented students haven't been able to break through the security barrier at the school building's main entrance; so far, no one has successfully entered the building.

Mo Chengzi didn't attempt to launch another attack all day. As a result, more and more people felt that his position as one of the top 5 in the class was undeserved.

But just as today's class was about to end, he, who had been squatting at the back coding, finally stood up.

"Norreggie, I'll give you 5000 yuan worth of server resources. Help me plan these resources and upgrade the applications on my device using my ideas. They don't need to be perfectly suited to the upcoming combat missions; focus on versatility. According to the general outline I designed beforehand, comprehensively enhance the entire program on my device."

"They only gave us such a small budget, how outrageous! They're so stingy! Maybe we should just hack into the bank! This is asking too much of us."

Mo Chengzi shook his head: "With your current skill level, you think you can hack the bank? You need to upgrade your equipment quickly. I'll be testing it with you next."

Norege pursed her lips, and then strands of hair spread out from the back of her head, connecting to her semi-transparent power armor. As these strands connected, the armor's shape began to change rapidly, and the semi-transparent parts began to materialize. What was originally just a conceptual module was being produced at an astounding pace.

This is the effect of spending money. Before, he had to painstakingly design a basic framework by hand, but now, with the help of the server's computing power, the efficiency of equipment evolution has increased several levels.

In the blink of an eye, the armor that looked like standard-issue armor, almost identical to the ones in textbooks, had been transformed into a streamlined structure that fit the body, and all the external weapons had been replaced with floating cannons, making it look incredibly futuristic.

This is, after all, a data world. Physical laws that seem to conform to human intuition are meaningless in themselves. So how the floating cannons actually float is not important, as long as the code can achieve the corresponding effect, that's enough.

In just 5 minutes, the 5000 yuan worth of computing power was completely used up, but the effect was remarkable. This set of gorgeous power armor immediately attracted the attention of many students.

"Damn it, that rich guy actually commissioned a custom-made program. He's poured all his money into hacking projects. I wonder how he's going to teach his other subjects!"

Wow, this guy is so rich! I really want to be his friend!

"It's just flashy but impractical stuff. The designs in textbooks from our school days are the most practical. I don't have as much money as a rich guy. If I try to do custom-made things, I won't even be able to afford the maintenance costs."

There are at least dozens of small groups in the class, and everyone in these groups is discussing Mo Chengzi's current equipment.

Mo Chengzi was clearly unaware of their discussion. After all, such unrestrained comments from one person must have been made in a group chat where he wasn't present. In a group chat where he was present, of course, all the classmates would be openly praising him and calling him awesome.

"Norrege, you also copy a set of armor, modify it to match your AI program, and try with me to see if we can get the data from the teaching building."

"Ha! This level of protection? I could handle it myself!" Noreiki's face showed an arrogant expression like a little devil.

"Tsk, the personality module has a big problem. The data strength on the other side is far beyond what we can compete with. Even if the two of us work together, we are not 100% confident. This artificial intelligence has no self-awareness at all. We need to find a way to adjust it."

Mo Chengzi didn't explicitly state the problem. Artificial intelligence's learning module requires a vast amount of data as reference material. While a few words might have some impact, the effect is limited. It's like a parent pulling a child's ear. Constant nagging doesn't guarantee the child will listen, but if they genuinely encounter setbacks in a certain area, they often learn much faster.

Given Norege's current state, it might be better to let her suffer some losses and lose some of her data modules; that might actually help her improve.

Mo Chengzi, accompanied by an AI assistant that was a size smaller than him, headed towards the opposite position without any classmates providing cover.

It's obvious. While his classmates outwardly praise him, they're all scheming. They have no intention of cooperating with him; their goal is to ensure he invests money but doesn't receive the teacher's reward. With their current skill level, theoretically, they have absolutely no chance of obtaining the data alone.

Mo Chengzi didn't mind being without help. After all, for this kind of infiltration and data gathering, a direct assault was the most foolish approach. These students hadn't yet grasped the proper strategy for carrying out a mission.
Mo Chengzi reached the edge of the position, but did not enter the warning range. At this position, his power armor began to rapidly change color, then transformed into a camouflage uniform. It enveloped him, making him look like an ordinary soldier. Norrell beside him underwent the same change in size.

"First, activate camouflage mode, then prepare for the replacement infiltration. Begin data concealment."

As soon as they finished speaking, the two began their operation. They threw two grenade-like objects outside the cordon. The next instant, the entire virtual space was enveloped in a burst of white light.

[To be continued]

Please add this to your favorites and vote for it! (End of Chapter)