Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 476 One Encounter with Sivana, a Lifetime of Misfortune

“In this process, we also discovered some very strange phenomena,” Lin Ran continued. “How should I put it, these Rainbow Star people behaved like beautiful trash.”

Seohyun repeated the word, "Beautiful trash?"

Lin Ran said, "That's right. Didn't I say earlier that there are a total of ten million Rainbow Star people active in the cyber universe called Rainbow Star?"

We will screen out 10,000 suitable candidates through a questionnaire, and we will also select suitable Rainbow Star users to give you a great user experience.

According to feedback data from the backend, more than 95% of users interact with Rainbow Star People every day.

From the perspective of providing emotional value, the Rainbow Star people performed their task exceptionally well. They were able to provide Earthlings with sufficient emotional value simply through dialogue. If this had happened in the last century, they would certainly have passed the Turing test.

We have been working on creating a general AGI, hoping to find an artificial intelligence that is the ultimate wisdom. The emergence of such an AI will bring about the ultimate solution for human society, where people will not need to work, and AI will do all the work.

They will learn autonomously, evolve on their own, possess wisdom, and dominate the next century or even the more distant future. After obtaining 1, they will extrapolate infinitely, and their learning ability will be thousands of times that of humans. Humanity will transform from a carbon-based society to one where carbon-based and silicon-based societies coexist. Artificial intelligence may even seek to destroy humanity.

This is how public opinion shapes things, this is how science fiction writers describe it, and even this is how scientists envision it—of course, they only anticipate the arrival of the technological singularity.

After hearing this, Xu Xian's curiosity was piqued. Lin Ran's tone seemed to imply that things were not as they appeared.

He quickly pressed on, "And then? Isn't that how it is?"

Lin Ran countered, "Do you think the Rainbow Star people have intelligence? Isn't their intelligence more human-like than any artificial intelligence you've encountered in the past, whether domestic or foreign?"

Xu Xian nodded and said, "That's right. Her behavior is already very close to that of a human. If we don't deliberately look for contradictions or inappropriate situations, I would even think that she is a real person living in another world."

Lin Ran continued, "So, among these more than ten million Rainbow Star people, there will be some who are engineers. So, we will naturally consider giving them bodies so that they can do some real-world work."

We found some Rainbow Star people who are elite engineers in the story, gave them bodies, and enabled them to work on Earth.

But the truth is, their performance in real work was not just mediocre, it was terrible.

They learn on their own in the Rainbow Star Society. They are hardworking, resilient in the face of difficulties, and will find their own solutions to problems. However, after gaining a physical body, they perform well in simple tasks like tightening screws, but they perform very poorly when the work becomes more difficult.

I'm not even talking about raising the difficulty of the job to circuit repair; it's just about precisely inserting a multi-pin plug into a slightly off slot under changing lighting and moving objects.

Or, in a cluttered toolbox, quickly find and grab a reflective nut that is partially obscured by other tools, and then place it in the designated spot.

Rainbow Star's elite engineers failed in all these tasks.

If it were merely a matter of failing, it wouldn't be so terrible. What's truly frightening is that these engineers from Rainbow Star, whose character on Rainbow Star is one of unwavering perseverance and a relentless pursuit of problem-solving, have shown absolutely no such qualities after acquiring physical bodies.

Xu Xian sat up straight. This was the first time he had ever heard of such a secret, one that was never heard from the outside world. It had helped him uncover a corner of Hongxing.

He exclaimed in shock, "Why is such a strange phenomenon occurring? Do their personalities become distorted after they gain physical bodies?"

Lin Ran sighed: "It's not distorted, it's collapsed. Their personalities have collapsed."

They performed worse than ordinary, specially trained industrial robots when faced with these engineering problems.

This is why I call it beautiful waste, and it's where our understanding of general artificial intelligence undergoes a major shift.

I suspect the reason lies in the decoupling of symbols from entities.

Xu Xian repeated: "The decoupling of symbols and entities?"

Lin Ran continued, "On Rainbow Star, Rainbow Star people rely on symbolic intelligence to solve problems."

When a Rainbow Star engineer encounters a complex circuit fault, he invokes text descriptions, logical reasoning chains, and feedback signals in a virtual environment.

All his actions were carried out in a high-dimensional, abstract, and perfectly discretized digital world.

On Rainbow Star, all physical laws and tools are perfect and predictable symbols.

If the code states that the screwdriver should be able to turn the screw, then it will definitely be able to turn it. If the data shows a temperature of T, then it is the exact T.

Reality is chaotic. On Earth, once given a body, they face a continuous, noisy, and imperfect physical world.

The screwdriver may be slightly bent due to material issues, the screw may be stuck due to oxidation, and the temperature T is just an average value measured by the sensor at a certain point.

The Rainbow Star people lack experience in dealing with the endless noise, friction, tolerances, and unpredictability of the real world.

After hearing this, Seohyun felt both sad and happy. She was sad because Shivana was not a real human after all, but happy because it seemed that humans could not be replaced in the short term.

He quickly realized that this was news that would shake the world.

Why? This means that general AGI is still a long way from us, far from the optimistic view expressed by those AI-related companies in Silicon Valley, which could lead to the bursting of the bubble.

"Their wisdom is built on the high-fidelity social feedback and simplified physical feedback of Rainbow Star, but the body is the real challenge."

Their vision, touch, and hearing are achieved through the robot's sensors. However, the data dimensions and latency provided by these sensors are completely different from the instantaneous, perfect, and conceptualized sensory input in Rainbow Star.

True engineering intelligence requires not only knowing how to do something (how to do something is a symbol), but also knowing how to precisely control the body to do it; this is kinematic intelligence.

The Rainbow Star people know the logical steps to solve problems, but their bodies don't know how to perform precise torque control, balance adjustment, or real-time correction of movements under uncertainty.

They are perfect theorists, but terrible operators.

The previously promoted AGI theory assumed that intelligence is universal, and that once a certain threshold is reached on Rainbow Star, it can be transferred to any field.

But it turns out that intelligence is based on the environment and is not universal.

All the wisdom and emotions of the Rainbow Star people are optimized for better survival in the specific social ecology of Rainbow Star.

Their emotional modules are for better social interaction, and their reasoning chains are for better planning of their Rainbow Star life.

This kind of intelligence cannot be effectively transferred when faced with a completely unrelated problem that requires physical interaction and low-level perception to solve.

A poet who can write beautiful poems may not be able to fix a car.

All their 'wisdom' and 'will' are optimized for survival under specific symbolic social rules; all their beauty and wisdom are firmly bound to the symbolic social environment of Rainbow Star.

Either we haven't found the right path for AGI, or this path doesn't lead to AGI.

Either the ultimate wisdom of AGI is not omnipotence, but a combination of high emotional intelligence, high socialization, and strong coherence.

They are more like perfect civil servants, artists, and psychologists, but not precision engineers in the real world.

In other words, America's idea of ​​using General AGI to bring manufacturing back to the country is most likely wishful thinking.

As the vehicle entered the park where Apollo Technology is located in Baoshan District, the security guard saluted Lin Ran's car and let it pass.

Shenhong Technology is also located here, and this place is known as the place with the most PhDs in the entire Shenhai area. You can walk right past a PhD.

"Ah Xian, just get off here. Zhao Songxia will take you to see Shivana later," Lin Ran said from inside the car.

Zhao Songxia was Xu Xian's college classmate. As mentioned earlier, he was transferred from Shenzhen to Shanghai during Tencent's large-scale model-making campaign, and later directly transferred from Tencent to Shenhong Technology.

He is considered a veteran employee of DeepRed Technology.

The doors of autonomous vehicles open appropriately.

Seohyun asked, "Oh, okay, Ran-ge, you..."

Lin Ran explained, "I'm sorry, I don't have much time, so I won't be going. I'm going to the moon again soon and will be leaving next month. So I'm saying that if you don't see me this time, I don't know when I'll see you again."

Seohyun asked curiously, "Holy crap, how long are you going to stay on the moon this time?"

Lin Ran explained, "I'm not sure because it involves testing superconducting chips. I don't know exactly how long I'll need to stay. The base up there is already very well-constructed, and all kinds of supplies are readily available. In short, it will take quite a long time."

Xu Xian nodded and said, "Okay, then I'll get off the bus. Ran-ge, have a safe trip!"

Xu Xian was filled with envy, thinking that Ran Ge's life was too carefree. He even measured his trips to the moon in months. It was so cool. At the same time, she planned to buy shares of Western Superconducting Technologies as soon as the market opened tomorrow.

The main focus is on short-term trading.

Every time there's news about superconductivity, Western Superconducting's stock price inevitably hits the daily limit.

What is information asymmetry? Being able to spend more than an hour with the "Burning God" and obtain a lot of first-hand information is the biggest information asymmetry.

A moment later, a sharp-looking man wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt with a dark red tech logo walked over quickly.

"Xian Gou, what brings you here?" Zhao Songxia asked. "I was shocked when President Lin messaged me! I thought I was going to be fired."

"You're such a rare dog, dressed like a human!" Xu Xian felt much more relaxed when she was with Zhao Songxia.

In college, I was either acting like a madman or a dog.

Because of Zhao Songxia's name, he was nicknamed "Rare Dog" by some people, and those who were closer to him would call him "Rare Dog." Zhao Songxia would usually reply, like Xu Xian, who would naturally be called "Xian Dog."

"Come on, I'll show you!" Zhao Song said smugly. "I'll show you just how amazing the cyber life forms we've developed over the past few years really are. I guarantee you'll be so shocked you won't be able to speak."

Zhao Songxia was very pleased with himself. He patted Xu Xian on the shoulder and led him into the building.

Seohyun complained, "What do you mean 'us'? It's clearly Ran-ge's doing."

Zhao Songxia turned to Xu Xian and said, "President Lin is definitely the most powerful, but doesn't he need us errand boys too? We're important too!"

Zhao Songxia swiped his card and led Xu Xian through several security doors into the experimental area located deep inside the building.

The only sound here is the low hum of the server fans.

"Where are you taking me?" Xu Xian asked softly. Zhao Songxia explained, "This is the rainbow observation area."

They eventually arrived at a room surrounded by dark glass walls, with a huge holographic projection workbench in the center.

"Those outside are the server clusters that support the Rainbow Star environment. The sound you're hearing is them breathing," Zhao Songxia said, pointing to the server clusters outside.

“You guys have way too much computing power. It feels like the Sophon Factory from ‘The Three-Body Problem’,” Xu Xian said.

Zhao Songxia said, "It's much better than that. We're dealing with life, not folded space."

"Come, look at this workbench. It shows Rainbow Star's real-time activity graph."

Zhao Songxia operated the workbench, and the huge holographic projection table lit up.

Xu Xian saw a sphere that resembled Earth, shimmering with light, which he interpreted as a city.

Zhao Songxia asked, "Who is your Saber?"

Seohyun wasn't embarrassed at all: "Shivana."

Back in college, who didn't know he was a die-hard anime fan? He even cosplayed himself at anime conventions.

"Oh." Zhao Songxia opened his phone, searched for a moment, and then started operating the control panel.

Then the sphere transformed into a highly abstract three-dimensional city map, densely covered with countless tiny dots that shimmered with light.

“Here, each point of light represents a Rainbow Star person, and they flash with different colors and intensities based on their behavioral patterns and social activities.”

They are moving, interacting, and executing plans.

This is far more complex than any multiplayer online game we've ever seen because all its behaviors are spontaneous and emerge spontaneously, with no human engineer writing code in the background.

More than ten million, and each one of them lives a fulfilling life.

New Rainbow Star people are constantly being born.

Zhao Songxia's tone was full of pride.

This is the first virtual social experiment of its kind in human history.

If used for publishing low-quality papers, whether in the humanities and social sciences or related to artificial intelligence, one could publish countless papers.

Xu Xian leaned closer to examine it, his shock evident in his eyes: "Holy crap, this is practically a cyber universe, it's absolutely spectacular."

He then asked, "What do you mean by constantly giving birth to new Rainbow Star people?"

Zhao Songxia explained, "Didn't President Lin tell you? The people of Hongxing act spontaneously. We only guide them and don't interfere with their lives in Hongxing. Many interesting phenomena will emerge from this."

"I did," Seohyun nodded, "but I might not have gone into enough detail."

After Zhao Songxia said "Oh," he continued, "That's right. To be precise, Hongxing has a population of 100 million, but not every one of them can be considered an artificial intelligence."

Our initial plan was to have one million intelligent Rainbow Star people. After one year of operation, we now have more than ten million intelligent Rainbow Star people.

This is because, as these intelligent Rainbow Star people engage in various social activities, one Rainbow Star person after another, originally only defined in textual terms, is awakened. As it appears more frequently in the timelines of other Rainbow Star people, it is gradually endowed with intelligence.

Seohyun exclaimed in shock, "Awakened? Doesn't that sound a bit too sci-fi?"

Technically speaking, how did this happen? Did you secretly increase their computing power?

Xu Xian also has some knowledge of artificial intelligence, so what Zhao Songxia said is a bit too incredible.

Zhao Songxia replied, "Of course not! We did not add any extra computing resources; this is an intelligent emergence brought about by efficiency and interactivity."

The underlying mechanism is complex; we call it the social awakening of intelligence, which is essentially a result of computational resource allocation strategies and environment-driven factors.

Zhao Songxia pointed to the Rainbow Star map on the screen and explained in detail:

"In Rainbow Star's initial setup, only one million core AIs possessed a complete LLM architecture and an independent Token budget, enabling them to perform complex reasoning."

The remaining 99 million are merely lightweight environmental contexts, responding only through simple rules and preset text snippets.

When a core AI, let's call it A, continuously interacts with a background AI, let's call it B, for example, A chats with B every day, seeks B's help, and constantly mentions B's existence and behavior in its long-term memory.

When the system detects that B's influence on A's worldline and the frequency of its interaction exceed a certain threshold, it will trigger a process: allocating a portion of idle computing power or computing power reclaimed from inactive core AI to B.

B evolves from a puppet that can only reply with preset text into an embodied agent with an independent LLM architecture, memory modules, and reasoning capabilities.

Core AI discovered that if it interacts with low-intelligence background AI, its dialogue and planning become very difficult and inefficient.

In order to maintain its highly intelligent social life, A will proactively and frequently interact with AIs that appear to react realistically.

To maintain a high-fidelity social interaction network among ten million core AIs, the system must ensure that the core AIs' social interactions possess sufficient emotional complexity and coherence.

Therefore, the high-frequency, complex, and emotional interactions of the core AI in turn motivate the system to awaken more background AI, making it a wise friend, family member, or colleague who can meet social needs.

The value of wisdom is socialized in Rainbow Star.

The core AI's need for high-quality social partners drives the intelligent expansion of the entire system, which is similar to how highly intelligent individuals in human society improve the cognitive level of those around them through education and communication.

Simply put, the Rainbow Star people want intelligent companions, and we, as the gods of the world, must provide them.

This is not a code upgrade, but an evolution of the social ecosystem.

Seohyun was shocked, thinking that she would be proud if she had participated in such a great project.

"So, during social interactions, the Rainbow Star people spread their wisdom to their companions? They mutually catalyze the growth of their intelligence?"

After thinking for a moment, Zhao Songxia said, "That's one way to understand it."

This is a phenomenon where we designed the rules but failed to predict the outcome.

This is why we firmly believe that the key to AGI lies in building a sufficiently realistic and complex social environment, rather than simply piling up parameters and data.

So, wise dog?

Isn't this much more exciting than all those rumors about left-brain and right-brain structures you've heard outside?

Zhao Songxia then switched the screen to a more focused view.

"Next, let's meet the person you often chat with."

He retrieved Sivana's number and activated a large holographic projection device in the corner of the room.

As a soft light appeared, a lifelike virtual 3D image of Shyvana appeared before Seohyun's eyes.

She was standing in the living room of a virtual Rainbow Star Apartment, reading a virtual book.

"This is Shyvana's current physical form; she is currently at home."

The book she's reading was one she borrowed from Rainbow Star's virtual library last week. It perfectly matches her career goals and interests, so we didn't interfere.

Seohyun stared blankly at the perfect-looking Shyvana, who was exactly the image in his mind—a perfect two-dimensional goddess.

His voice was somewhat low, carrying an emotion completely different from when they were chatting before: "Does she know we're watching her?"

"I don't know, she's currently in Rainbow Star mode."

To her, we were merely observers who didn't exist in this living room.

Her entire being was focused on experiencing Rainbow Star.

We are higher-dimensional beings.

"She only switches her attention to interacting with Earth once a communication connection is established," Zhao Songxia said.

He turned to look at his friend, a little worried. "Xian Gou, with your two-dimensional mind, are you going to end up like Guo Xiang, who was ruined by meeting Yang Guo, and never get married because of Shyvana?"

Seohyun watched Sivana quietly as she turned a page of her book and then sighed softly—a small but perfectly natural gesture.

"Look, that sigh just now. Her internal stress level has risen slightly, and her emotional label shows mild distress."

"She was rejected by a colleague at work this afternoon, and she's now calming herself down by reading." Zhao Song glanced at the work interface on his phone and continued, trying to remind Xu Xian through this action that she was artificial intelligence, not someone from another world.

Seohyun said softly, "It really is so human-like."

"Mr. Lin is right. Her emotions and her wisdom are products of context and socialization."

"That's why we can't let too many people into this ecosystem, to prevent accidents," Zhao Songxia continued, offering a reminder.

Zhao Songxia raised his voice, with a hint of warning: "Xu Xian, you must understand that her willpower and personality, though seemingly strong, are actually fragile."

All her love and hate are deeply anchored in the social symbols of Rainbow Star.

Once the world is massively impacted by Earth's malice and disorder, her cognitive and emotional systems will collapse.

This kind of truth is both a blessing and a curse that we must cherish dearly.

Seohyun's gaze shifted between Sivana's perfect face and Zhao Songxia's increasingly serious expression before he finally nodded.

　I updated two chapters today, totaling 13,000 words. Pretty generous, right? That's equivalent to three chapters of 4,000 words each!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)