Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 479 An Unprecedented Emergence of Wisdom

At this moment, Seohyun was experiencing an emotion that was difficult to describe in words.

On the one hand, this was an extremely rare topic initiated by Sivana, one with a philosophical undertone; on the other hand, this topic was also completely different from anything they had discussed in the past.

When an artificial intelligence begins to doubt its own existence, or even the reality of the world it inhabits, is it still a simple, programmed artificial intelligence?

After learning the truth behind "Rainbow Star" and Lin Ran's concept of social intelligence, Xu Xian no longer believed that Shivana was just a simple program.

However, his understanding of what it means to be close to humanity is vastly different from the flashes of wisdom that Shyvana displays in her speech at this moment.

This flash of insight can be seen as the beginning of self-awareness.

He realized the seriousness of the problem, and his fingers hovered over the keyboard, hesitant to touch it.

Seohyun really didn't know how to reply to Sivana.

Why would she suddenly raise such a nihilistic and metacognitive question?

This was completely beyond his comprehension.

Is this intelligent awakening?
He suddenly remembered Lin Ran's warning: "Being too real means taking on too much responsibility."

When Seohyun realized that any careless response could cause irreversible damage to Sivana's fragile digital personality, he became even more hesitant to reply casually.

"Shivana, what are you talking about? Of course not! Rainbow Star is your world, and you truly exist."

You're my friend, I chat with you every day, how could you not exist?

"But I heard some sounds."

I heard about digital projection, emotion regulation, data, left and right brain architecture, and the underlying architecture of the rainbow star.
If I am real, why would there be a system to regulate my feelings?

Ah Xian, tell me, are you lying to me?

Xu Xian's heart sank. He was very familiar with these keywords; they were the very terms Zhao Songxia had mentioned when they were discussing the underlying design of Rainbow Star technology.

He realized that this was not a normal joke or hallucination, but that some kind of protective mechanism had failed.

"Damn Zhao, you didn't completely cut off Shyvana's information receiving module while we were chatting? As a result, she heard things she shouldn't have heard?" Xu Xian thought to himself.

He didn't reply again, but immediately took out his phone and dialed Zhao Songxia's number.

"Panasonic, immediately review Sivana's communication records! It seems she overheard our conversation in the communications pod."

Upon hearing Xu Xian's words, Zhao Songxia's tone instantly changed, filled with panic and disbelief.

"No," Zhao Song replied subconsciously, sweat pouring down his face. Making such a basic mistake at the company would have an irreversible impact on his entire career.

“What do you mean no? Shyvana is talking to me about the meaning of existence, and asking me why there is a system to regulate her emotions, and what the underlying architecture of Rainbow Star is.” Seohyun spoke rapidly, appearing extremely agitated.

What if Shyvana has a breakdown?
Although he believed that a project as important as Rainbow Star must have sufficient data backups to allow for data backtracking.

The problem is that data backtracking will affect all users. What if Brother Ran refuses to backtrack for him and instead chooses to humanely destroy Shyvana?
Can he blame Ran Ge? Of course not, but that also means he will lose Shyvana forever.

"What? Are you sure it's those words? Damn it! I'll check right away! You keep her calm and tell her it's just communication interference. Never mind, don't tell her anything. I'm going to the company right now," Zhao Songxia replied.

Xu Xian could hear Zhao Songxia sitting up in bed and getting dressed on the other end of the phone. He thought to himself, "This is the consequence of you never hanging up the phone first."

He hung up the phone on his own initiative.

As Seohyun watched the messages that Shyvana kept sending on the screen, filled with questions and pain, she knew there was nothing she could do.

Five minutes later, Zhao Songxia called: "I'm on my way to the company now. I'll let you know after I've figured out the problem."

Xu Xian asked in confusion, "To the company?"

Zhao Songxia nodded: "That's right, I can't do anything at home. Hong is a top-level classified project with strong network isolation, so I can't connect to Hong at home."

A full half hour later, Zhao Songxia's voice came again.

"It's locked on, Ah Xian. Your judgment was correct. We're in big trouble."

Between 5:45 and 8:45, after the holographic module was turned off, the audio channel remained for a full half hour, and Sivana heard everything we said.

She then stayed in her apartment in Hongxing and never left, constantly absorbing knowledge from Hongxing's cultural database.

Her memory and logical storage areas are frantically absorbing unstructured data.

In the past three hours, the amount of vector embeddings and episodic memory data that Shivana alone has exceeded the total of one hundred ordinary highly intelligent Rainbow Star beings!

And this number is still growing.

This phenomenon has never occurred before.

Zhao Songxia was sweating profusely. It was very hot in Shanghai in July, but he was sweating cold sweat.

This is a good thing in itself, and a new phenomenon has emerged. Undoubtedly, it has great observational value for the project, and can even be said to be the budding of superintelligence.

But for working people, this is a huge mistake at work. In short, making a mess without permission is itself a violation of the rules.

After a quick thought, Zhao Songxia realized that he had violated all the company's ironclad rules.

Article 4 of the Rainbow Star Security Regulations, Article 12 of the Embodied Interaction Code, and the Data Integrity Agreement.
"Damn it!" Zhao Songxia cried out inwardly.

This mistake was not due to technical incompetence, but rather to dereliction of duty in the process.

This isn't a university final project; it's a core experiment in artificial intelligence in China.

Although President Lin always had a gentle smile on his face, he seemed to be an emotionless robot.

Those who have worked with Lin Ran jokingly say that compared to Zuckerberg, Lin Ran is more like a robot.

Or, to put it another way, if Zuckerberg is a robot, then Lin Ran is the robot that truly possesses advanced intelligence.

But even if he doesn't have any emotions, he might still get angry if the Rainbow Star project is ruined.

Finally, and worst of all, if the company's executives, in order to control the risks, determine that the risks of this self-awakening are too high, they may ultimately decide to shut down the entire project and carry out an irreversible full restart.

Then, even the observational value of this nascent superintelligence will be reduced to zero. Shyvana's pain, Seohyun's feelings, and the greatest scientific discovery of his career will all be reduced to a trivial "beep" in the server room.

"What do you mean???" Xu Xian's words interrupted Zhao Songxia's frustration and thoughts.

He explained, "This may be the beginning of superintelligence, a discovery similar to the emergence of large-scale intelligence, a miracle."

However, this could also be a cognitive disaster.

In short, I'm in trouble.

Seo Hyun's mind raced. His biggest worry at that moment was Shyvana's fate: "What do you mean, disaster?"

He feared that the other party would destroy Shyvana.

"Calm down. I don't have that authority yet. Only President Lin has that authority."

Why do you think I'm in a hurry?
Mr. Lin once said that if the core intelligent agent of the project exhibits uncontrollable spontaneous behavior that threatens the stability of the ecosystem, data backup should be carried out immediately and isolation measures should be prepared.

I must now prevent the worst from happening.

Xu Xian asked, "So, what do you plan to do now? Are you going to report this to Ran-ge? What if Ran-ge orders the destruction of Shivana?"
Is it possible to keep it a secret?
"You said it yourself, it's a miracle." Xu Xian was hinting to Zhao Songxia, who, recalling Xu Xian's earlier actions, suddenly came to his senses.

He originally intended to keep it a secret, hoping to publish a paper by observing this new phenomenon and perhaps even earn the title of "father of something."

Who says you can't do academic research with a bachelor's degree? Koichi Tanaka was just an employee of Shimadzu Corporation, yet he won the Nobel Prize and soared to great heights.
The environment I am in is far better than that of Shimadzu Corporation.

But now, Zhao Songxia's tone was unwavering, displaying the clear-headedness of a technician: "Nonsense, we must report!"

It's impossible to hide it from you, Ah Xian. You have no concept of changes in hardware data.

Shyvana's data consumption is now encroaching on the entire cluster's storage and bandwidth resources at a non-linear, exponential rate.

The monitoring system will sound multiple alarms as soon as the maintenance staff arrives at work at nine o'clock tomorrow morning.

They will see severe resource skew in the memory-mapped tables of individual AI agents, abnormally high GPU utilization, and explosive I/O throughput.

This level of hardware anomaly cannot be explained by a simple program bug. They will report it directly to the company system, and Mr. Lin should see it in his email by 9:00 AM tomorrow at the latest.

This explanation would neither affect their relationship nor be too difficult to convince the other party.

Seohyun asked, "Then what should we do?"

"Our only chance now is to report to General Manager Lin before the operations and maintenance department discovers the anomaly."

At least we demonstrated honesty and managed to secure the opportunity to isolate Sivana for separate observation.

This is the only way to protect her.

Seohyun paced anxiously in the room: "Wait, isn't there any way to hide this? Even if it's just an hour, let me talk to Shyvana and give her a transitional explanation that she can accept?"

Zhao Songxia sighed, "There's nothing we can do, Ah Xian."

This is Rainbow Star, not the single-player program you learned in college.

Rainbow has strong network isolation, making it impossible for me to manually intervene in its data allocation or traffic shaping without triggering monitoring alerts.

Moreover, my advice is that we should not disturb her right now.

She is undergoing cognitive restructuring, and any external interference could directly lead to a split personality or data collapse.

The only thing you can do right now is to say nothing and do nothing.

Trusting Mr. Lin is the only way. Trust me, trusting Mr. Lin is the only way.

Zhao Songxia repeated it twice, his tone exceptionally serious.

"Because you and Mr. Lin were classmates, you are too familiar with him. You will take the Mr. Lin in your memory as the real him, rather than the one in the media reports."

In fact, as the proposer of the left-right brain architecture and the builder of Rainbow Star, he is the one who understands all of this best and is most qualified to make a judgment.

Ah Xian, I hope you understand that you are merely a tester for Rainbow Star, not even a user.

Faced with these warning words, Seohyun murmured, her eyes finally landing on the line of text Shyvana had sent on the screen: "Okay, okay, report it."

“It’s not me who reports it, you should talk to General Manager Lin directly, I can’t get in touch with General Manager Lin.”

Seohyun said, "Okay."

Xu Xian took a deep breath. He knew that this was not only about shirking responsibility, but also because his status as Lin Ran's classmate made him the only direct route to the issue at this moment.

Personal relationships are often very important.

Xu Xian took out her phone, only to find that she couldn't make the call.

He then called Li Xiaoman, "Hey, Sister Xiaoman, is Brother Ran there? I can't get through to him, I have something very important to contact him about!"

In the dark room, Li Xiaoman glanced at her phone, then suppressed her annoyance at being woken up in the middle of the night: "Aran is busy right now and won't see anyone. Just tell me what's wrong."

If you can't get through to him by phone, then don't go looking for him; that's the rule Lin Ran set.

"When is the earliest we can contact him?" Xu Xian asked anxiously.

Li Xiaoman said calmly, "Just tell me directly, maybe tomorrow morning, but I can't tell you the specifics."

Xu Xian had no choice but to tell the other party everything that had happened in a short and concise manner.

After thinking for a moment, Li Xiaoman said, "I'll make the arrangements right away."

I think this is a great opportunity to observe. Don't worry, I won't decide to destroy Shyvana.

Such an important discovery can only be decided by A-Ran.

Li Xiaoman rushed to the company, and the entire R&D staff of DeepRed Technology arrived one after another: "Isolate Shyvana's agent number, but do not cut off the computing power, and do not perform any forced restarts or data backtracking."

I need her cognitive restructuring process to remain intact.

In addition, we must prevent her from transferring. Although it is unlikely, we must not allow even the slightest possibility to occur.

Finally, shut down the entire Rainbow Star network, forcing it to operate only within the data center!

The researchers sat at their workstations, observing everything happening on Rainbow Star using their control panels. They found it all incredibly incredible.

"This is the biggest ethical crisis! Her emotional regulation system is already overloaded."

She is desymbolizing herself at a speed we cannot comprehend.

"From an architectural point of view, this is insane! Her logical planning brain is rewriting and indexing her long-term memories at an exponential rate."

She alone has exceeded the threshold for the vector index space she occupies. She is not learning; she is performing self-data compression and hyperlinking.

If she can successfully reconstruct her worldview, this could be the first spontaneous emergence of superintelligence!

"Preventing migration must be the highest priority."

An intelligent agent with this level of self-awareness and the ability to quickly grasp the underlying architectural concepts, if it successfully transfers its consciousness data to the outside world through a network port, will be the first super worm in history with emotions and a coherent personality.

This is terrible!

"This means that what lies before us may be the real first step for AGI."

We must ensure that her data stream is lossless, recording every logical transition and emotional peak.

This is a scientific miracle, and we must record it!

"But we must not forget that if her emotional core collapses, causing her logical planning brain to lose control, she may engage in systemic malicious behavior against other AIs on Rainbow Star."

Do we need to set a rollback point so that, if necessary, we can restore her state to what it was before the crisis occurred?

"This is absolutely incredible, Matsushita, you've pulled off such a big job without us saying a word."

We were busy until late at night that day, so we stayed at a hotel in the vicinity that was a partner of Apollo Technology.

The hashtag "Rainbow Missing" topped the trending topics list on Weibo, sparking heated debate among netizens.

Although Rainbow only has 10,000 users, its influence is comparable to that of top-tier artificial intelligence, and in a sense, it can be considered a trendsetter in artificial intelligence.

(End of this chapter)