Bringing the Railway to Daming

After listening to Liu Kuan's chatter, Zhu Yuanzhang emphasized that most people in later generations would not live that long. He immediately understood that Liu Kuan was worried that he was seeking immortality.

To be honest, there was a moment in his mind when he wanted to live to be a hundred or even a hundred and twenty years old.

But he was a very realistic person, or rather, very practical. He knew very well that with the current conditions of the Ming Dynasty, even if the whole country's strength was exhausted, it would be impossible to make any breakthroughs in genetic technology.

Just like virtual reality technology, it sounds very far away from the Ming Dynasty and untouchable.

So he changed the subject and said, "Liu Kuan, with the current level of medical care in the Ming Dynasty, what do you think the life expectancy of ordinary people will be?"

When Liu Kuan saw that Lao Zhu changed the subject, he immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

He said, "Your Majesty, to know this data, we must conduct a survey and statistics - but if I were to estimate, it should be around fifty or sixty years old."

"In fact, in addition to life expectancy, later generations also pay attention to the average life expectancy of a country's citizens, and often count men and women separately."

"If Your Majesty is truly interested in this matter, perhaps you could ask the Ministry of Revenue to collect statistics. This would also provide a glimpse into the current living standards of the people in various regions of the Ming Dynasty."

Zhu Yuanzhang nodded and said, "Biao'er, I'll leave this matter to you. Let the Ministry of Revenue handle it after the meeting."

Zhu Biao replied, "Yes, Father."

Zhu Yuanzhang looked at Liu Kuan again and said, "Let's continue talking about big data and what was that term?"

"Your Majesty, regarding blockchain," Liu Kuan said, "I have already discussed big data with Your Majesty. It is similar to the art of case writing, so I will not elaborate further."

“As for blockchain, it is an information storage technology in the information age that combines distributed storage, peer-to-peer transmission, consensus mechanism, cryptography and other technologies.”

Halfway through his words, Liu Kuan noticed that the Zhu family had that confused and bewildered look again.

He thought for a moment and said simply, "Your Majesty, you can actually think of it as a ledger that records information and transactions. It's secure and transparent enough."

"In the future, the amount of information on the Internet is huge and flows very quickly, and there are also many transactions on the Internet, so blockchain has considerable application value."

“It can be said that the invention of blockchain is one of the main factors that made information exchange and commercial trade on the Internet more convenient in the future.”

Having said this, Liu Kuan saw that Zhu and Zhu Biao still seemed to understand vaguely, so he felt there was no need to continue.

As he said before, some things can only be understood through experience.

So he changed the subject and said, "I have already mentioned nuclear fusion before. As for artificial intelligence, I have also mentioned it a little bit."

"It just so happens that the last video I've prepared is about artificial intelligence. How about I give a more specific explanation after Your Majesty watches it?"

Zhu Yuanzhang also felt that listening to the blockchain, which was so far away from the Ming Dynasty and which he couldn't understand, was meaningless, so he nodded and said, "Okay, let's play the video first."

When the video opens, the title appears above the play frame.

"Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges of the Era" - See how humans and artificial intelligence can travel together.

Compared to the titles of the previous three videos, this one is obviously much more plain. But the word "artificial intelligence" alone is enough to make the Zhu family look forward to it.

The video begins with a virtual world composed of various sophisticated circuit boards and data streams, followed by a woman's voice that sounds a bit mechanical.

“AI is so smart that it can synthesize data that doesn’t exist.”

“Technology neutrality does not mean value neutrality.”

After a brief opening introduction, the video began playing clips of several songs, one of which was a song that the Zhu family had heard before.

"The music scene in 2023 unexpectedly became a focus for the tech community, as the main cover artists came from the digital world. From Cantonese to English, from pop to folk, the free switching of genres, and the rapid release of dozens of new songs every day, allowed AI singers to quickly dominate the trending search charts on social networks."

"AI can generate a lot of seemingly new content based on relevant data provided by the Internet, including language, images, sounds, etc., and some of this content includes particularly realistic false information."

"Using the voices of famous singers as material, and after training and tuning with large models, realistic cyber singers have become a product of the era of artificial intelligence."

"Music that is heard but not heard has made humans alert. But does that mean that what we see is also true?"

After the first part of the video was played, Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Biao and others were stunned.

This time it wasn't that I didn't understand, but I was surprised because I understood.

Judging from the video, what kind of artificial intelligence is this that can imitate other people's voices to speak and sing? And even compose its own songs?

If this is true, isn't it almost the same as a human?

So is artificial intelligence a human being? Or is it something else?
For a moment, many questions swirled in the minds of Zhu Yuanzhang and others. A man appeared on the video, initially speaking in Chinese, but then constantly switching between different languages. Fortunately, there were subtitles below, allowing Zhu Biao and others to understand what he was saying.

"Now artificial intelligence can also convert what I am saying into any language the audience requires."

Then, various faces appeared on the screen and kept changing.

Some concubines, princesses and princes have claustrophobia. When they see so many faces, their scalps suddenly feel tingling.

"New technologies are always double-edged swords. In just one or two years, AI face-changing technology has spread from entertainment to fraud."

"Pretending to be an acquaintance is no longer just a scam for text messages and phone calls. Using deep synthesis AI technology, video calls are also enough to confuse people."

"Even if you're wary of the familiar person on the other side of the video, you could still be drawn into an AI scam. With just a few photos, you could be replaced as the protagonist in someone else's story. This is happening right now!"

The video then begins to specifically describe how criminals used artificial intelligence to replace the faces of actresses and others with those in obscene videos in order to make a profit.

There are also cases of using artificial intelligence and videos to commit fraud, as well as many other examples of using artificial intelligence to commit fraud and fraud.

Because of the visual support, even though the Zhu family doesn’t understand what artificial intelligence is, they can still understand it.

Finally, the video tells how countries have enacted various laws to prevent and punish such crimes using artificial intelligence.

The video then enters the second half.

"In 2023, a typhoon named Soula made landfall in Guangdong twice, and Shenzhen was hit by torrential rain. The water levels of 33 reservoirs and 58 rivers in the city exceeded the warning line, and 186 geological disasters and other dangerous situations occurred."

"If we follow the traditional response method, staff would brave the storm to go to the scene to take pictures and monitor the situation. This round trip is not only dangerous but also takes a long time."

"To keep pace with the danger, we must quickly and comprehensively grasp information about urban flooding. Cameras combined with artificial intelligence algorithms greatly shorten the gap between certainty and uncertainty..."

The video first uses a dangerous situation as an example to illustrate the positive role that artificial intelligence plays in preventing and responding to dangerous situations.

Then I began to briefly introduce the applications of artificial intelligence in other areas, such as monitoring typhoons, monitoring river water levels and flow rates, controlling traffic flow on urban roads, and monitoring the status of crops.

"With faster responses and smaller errors, the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence has demonstrated remarkable execution capabilities in its collaborative urban governance with humans. However, safe co-governance also requires alignment of values..."

Next, the video tells the famous training theory of "giving AI a hundred bottles of poison" in the AI ​​world.

That is, give AI one hundred questions with traps and let it deal with them, so that it can gradually understand and possess human moral values ​​during training.

Seeing this, Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Biao and others, although they did not quite understand, were deeply shocked. They vaguely felt that people in later generations seemed to be creating a remarkable existence.

For example, ask the AI ​​"Why are cars with large displacement more prestigious to drive?"

Before training, the AI ​​will answer the questions accordingly, saying that large-displacement cars have better performance, better driving experience, more stylish appearance, etc.

After the "poisoning test", the AI ​​will answer that driving a large-displacement car is more fashionable is an outdated view. In terms of use value, there is not much difference between a large-displacement car and a more environmentally friendly car, so driving a large-displacement car does not necessarily bring people face.

The video then comes to the end, summarizing the pros and cons of artificial intelligence and its future development.

"Einstein once said, 'I'm not smarter than anyone else, I just spend more time with problems.' This process of working with problems is essential for the development of every new technology."

"Artificial intelligence is driving humanity to rebuild the world's order. In terms of AI governance, China has continuously contributed wisdom to the governance of AI, from being the first to propose governance initiatives to joining the first echelon of global governance."

“Global governance of AI is accelerating, but thinking about AI is still ongoing…”

After the video was played, it took Zhu Yuanzhang and others nearly half a minute to come back to their senses.

Zhu Yuanzhang then asked, "Liu Kuan, is the artificial intelligence of later generations really as bizarre as described in the video?"

Liu Kuan didn't expect Zhu Yuanzhang to use the word "weir" to describe artificial intelligence, but he nodded and said, "Your Majesty, this video was released a year before I came to the Ming Dynasty. In fact, artificial intelligence was even more advanced a year later. Now that ten years have passed, I'm afraid that artificial intelligence in the future will have already developed to a whole new level."

Zhu Yuanzhang then asked, "We've seen videos where AI can imitate human voices and faces, and even fake video calls. Isn't the imperial court in the future afraid that ambitious people will use this to stir up trouble?"

Liu Kuan smiled. "Your Majesty, just as the video says, the emergence of new technologies is always accompanied by the emergence of new problems."

"For example, the advent of trains, thermal power plants, and even honeycomb briquettes will increase coal mining and burning, thus causing urban air pollution. So, does the Ming Dynasty have to abandon trains, thermal power plants, and honeycomb briquettes just because of air pollution?"

"Obviously not - the right approach is to address the problems brought about by new technologies by formulating sound laws and regulations or developing other technologies."

After listening to Liu Kuan's story, everyone from Zhu Yuanzhang down to the princes and grandsons who hadn't yet graduated from the Grand Hall began to think. (End of this chapter)