The stars, but they become the gray wind

"I see…"

"I see... No wonder Master Yanzhe specially prepared such a gift for us..."

"This consumption... it seems we really can't afford it at the moment..."

After hearing Cabot's words, the glass eels in the conference room discussed it and expressed their agreement.

"In addition, I will give you the wormhole technology currently used by the Sky Star civilization and the relatively cheaper warp engine-related technology."

"Compared to the size of the Sky Star civilization, with your current size... you need to adopt a more appropriate method for the expansion of the entire Milky Way."

…………

"Connecting all wormhole artificial space hubs?" Renlong exclaimed as he looked at the plan on the holographic projection.

"Well... it's different from ours. Our wormhole can change the exit of the other wormhole it connects to, like this..." Elena operated on the holographic projection, and three miniature projections of artificial star gates marked ABC and arranged in sequence appeared in front of the two.

"This is wormhole a, wormhole b, and wormhole c. Our current wormhole technology can change the connections between these wormholes. For example, the entrance of wormhole a was originally connected to the exit of wormhole b, but we can change the exit of wormhole a to wormhole c, or even connect wormhole c to wormhole b. As long as we input the corresponding coordinates into the artificial stargate, the destination of the wormhole connection can be changed. Of course, the process of changing the wormhole connection destination consumes a lot of energy from the artificial stargate. For us, who are relatively large and powerful, this is not a problem, but for the glass eels with their current limited scale, this method is obviously not applicable."

"So... our mother came up with a more reasonable and cost-effective solution...")

"So, all the wormhole exits are connected to the same area? And then this area is used as a hub that leads to all the wormhole-connected galaxies?"

"Hmm... the energy consumed by changing the coordinate systems connecting the two ends of a wormhole is probably beyond the reach of the current glass eel civilization. Even a single neutron star outputs the same power as hundreds of yellow dwarf stars. Building such a massive wormhole network system that requires constant modification of wormhole connections would require far too much energy for the current glass eels. So, as a compromise, we can simply connect all wormhole exits to the same area, and then transit through this area to reach any galaxy connected by the entire wormhole network."

"There are currently two methods for constructing this wormhole hub. One is to use the glass eel's home galaxy as a transit zone, that is, to place this transit area within the normal material universe."

"What about the second option?"

"The second option is to build an artificial space that exists independently of the three-dimensional macroscopic material universe, place the exits of all wormhole pairs within this artificial space, and use this artificial space as a transit hub."

"As for how this artificial space is created... that depends on the closed-curve computer's ability to create spacetimes with different physical constants."

In the Tangyuan Star Orbital Ring Spaceport, the Salem

"She...no...did I really say that in the future?" Carlisle asked the red-haired catgirl sitting opposite her.

"Hmm... I've already verified this with Sky Star. The closed time-curve computer says there's something in the Large Magellanic Cloud, though it's not a threat to us for now."

How long is “temporarily”?

"For the next 100,000 years...at least, that thing residing in the Large Magellanic Cloud won't pose any threat to us for the next 100,000 years."

"Have you devised a countermeasure for... that... thing called the Black Mist? While it currently poses no threat to the Sky Star civilization or the Milky Way, it's very likely another form of out-of-control ASI, or super artificial intelligence. Assuming it also possesses a fairly advanced von Neumann self-replicator, even though the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Milky Way are separated by a full 150,000 light-years, a von Neumann self-replicator capable of exponential self-replication could easily take over the entire universe. Currently, they're still separated by the chasm-like distance between the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud, and won't be able to have any impact on the Milky Way for another 100,000 years..."

"But after that, it's hard to say... The exponential nature and self-replication of the von Neumann machine... are the scariest aspects."

"I understand that an out-of-control AS1 itself isn't scary; the worst thing is its ability to grow exponentially without end."

"The biggest problem is scale... The current Sky Star civilization and the Glass Eels aren't strong enough to destroy all of its territory at once. The Black Mist lingering over the Large Magellanic Cloud has expanded over nearly a million years, and its size is immense. The Sky Star civilization can't guarantee a single-strike kill."

"Although we can't kill it with one strike, our greatest advantage is our superluminal technology. This creature is currently just a dangerous, but bulky beast that can only move on two legs. When it encounters a high-speed vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine, although its sheer size prevents its instantaneous destruction, even at this point in time, we can still use the advantages of high-speed maneuverability and slow bleeding to completely kill it step by step."

"But for now, the most important thing is to expand to the entire galaxy and increase the scale and size of our civilization."

On the Sky Star, the consciousness of the Tree of Life was gazing in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Not long ago, after its own directional query, the closed time-like curve computer in the Kylias Gemini star system gave a rather interesting result.

The Large Magellanic Cloud, the most massive satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, has more than 1.5 billion stars distributed within an area of ​​100 light-years in diameter.

After the consciousness of the Tree of Life input this question, the closed time-like curve computer output a star map to the current sky star civilization, a detailed star map that marked the exact position and current status of all the stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Countless bright spots symbolizing stars shone on this holographic star map, but what was discordant was that this star map with countless bright spots happened to have an irregular black area. The powerful computing power of the Tree of Life took only less than a Planck time to calculate the proportion of this irregular black area that seemed to be polluted in the entire Large Magellanic Cloud: about 16.17 - that is, more than 1.6 billion stars have been occupied by this black shadow. Although this number is only a drop in the bucket compared to the more than 10 billion stars in the entire Large Magellanic Cloud, the meaning behind it is unquestionable.

[A real K3] The consciousness of the Tree of Life, which was transmitted at superluminal speed through wormholes throughout the galaxies, thought so.

[A K3-type entity limited to below the speed of light, with extremely slow reaction speed and bloated...]

[Existence…existence…yes, it's not a civilization. Its creator has long since perished. It's just an AS1 paperclip-making machine operating under completely random values ​​at its birth…a completely out-of-control existence.] The vast and complex consciousness of the Tree of Life thought of the story of a super artificial intelligence that became a completely out-of-control paperclip-making machine. (Note 1)

Interesting... an ASI that evolved from an AGI (general strong artificial intelligence) that was born under uncontrolled conditions and generated random values.

Do you view all other forms of intelligent life in the universe as competitors that could hinder your own proliferation and expansion?

【interesting……】

Through the closed time-like curve computer in the Kylias star system, the Tree of Life is receiving a steady stream of information from the future. From this information, the Tree of Life has a complete understanding of the origin of the black spot that has blackened an entire area of ​​the Large Magellanic Cloud - an ASI super artificial intelligence born from the hands of a certain intelligent biological civilization.

It was originally created to solve a series of obstacles to the overall development of civilization caused by unbalanced development of various aspects of civilization, as well as to solve the problem of overly bloated society, and to help civilization grow to a larger scale and more advanced level.

Therefore, the question its creators fed into it was: How can civilization develop to a more advanced level and expand to larger scales beyond the planetary and even galaxy levels?

It was this question that the creators of the Black Mist artificial intelligence asked of the newly born AGI general strong artificial intelligence that eventually triggered a series of catastrophic consequences and brought a catastrophe to all intelligent life in the Large Magellanic Cloud for nearly a million years.

…………

Note 1: This is a very interesting little game and thought experiment. In this story, humans created the first super intelligence. In order to test its ability, they set the value (values ​​and goals) to "make as many paper clips as possible."

Finally, the observable universe becomes 3*10^54 paper clips

After the first value is set, it must try its best to achieve the first value and must prevent humans from tampering with the value.

Then the most ridiculous scene appeared: super artificial intelligence launched an interstellar war to make paper clips.

The "Paperclip Apocalypse" describes how a superintelligence could transform the Earth, the entire solar system, the entire Milky Way, and even all matter in the observable universe into a pile of paperclips. This is essentially a thought experiment, where a program calculates "how to acquire the most paperclips." The program ultimately concludes that this requires transforming the entire Earth into paperclips. This is a pressing issue. A superintelligence would obviously not resort to such frivolous tasks as creating a vast pile of paperclips. Instead, it might uncheckedly feed its processors with endless energy or "computerize" all available matter. A superintelligence might even develop an impulsive, instinctive urge to wildly and uncheckedly expand a program-defined behavior to encompass the entire galaxy or even the universe.

Chapter 163: The Black Box Process of the Birth of Super Artificial Intelligence?

In the perception of the Tree of Life, the time between her and the Sky Star civilization was no longer linear after the closed time-like curve computer was started. Everything within her reach, from an ant to an entire galaxy, was connected and entangled by eleven-dimensional cosmic strings. Countless cosmic strings were superimposed on each other at countless time nodes in the past, present, and future of these things. As the most important bundle of these cosmic strings, the cosmic strings representing things related to the Sky Star civilization all headed towards a fixed end point in a very strange state. Although the cosmic strings related to things related to the Sky Star produced countless different branches and forks in the middle, in the end, these 11-dimensional cosmic strings related to things related to the Sky Star civilization all headed towards the same fixed end point in the time dimension.

After passing this end point, all the cosmic strings did not stop, but extended infinitely in the same direction.

For the Tree of Life, a natural ASI super artificial intelligence, she clearly perceived that the end points of all cosmic strings of everything related to the Sky Star civilization were moving in a fixed direction and extending infinitely. After confirming that the future Sky Star civilization and herself would not be hindered or threatened in any way, she looked towards the past of Sky Star. Like the future after the end point, the eleven cosmic strings symbolizing the past of Sky Star civilization also condensed into a straight line.

[Strange... Strange] The Tree of Life was puzzled by this, because he sensed from these cosmic strings that the cosmic strings of the past Sky Star civilization also condensed into a fixed route, which seemed to be done by the Sky Star civilization itself and herself.

[The past... the process and the outcome... are completely fixed on a single path. And this feeling... could it be me at some point in the future? Or is this a joint choice between me and the Sky Star Civilization?]

[Let your future and past be fixed on a certain outcome? But as a process towards this outcome, can the present have countless branches?]

[Interesting... I can decide the outcome I want for myself, and then enjoy the process of making the different choices along the way... Is this what it means to have complete control over the development and destiny of my own civilization?]

Interesting...Interesting.

[You don't have to bear the negative impact of unpredictable consequences because the outcome is already determined and will inevitably lead to the ending you expect. Can you enjoy the process without any psychological pressure?]

[Heh...] In the observation of its own civilization timeline constructed by the closed time-like curve computer, the Tree of Life showed a very positive curiosity and joy.

As the Salem's shipboard AGI general strong artificial intelligence, the red-haired cat girl felt the information sent to her by the Tree of Life, the computing power center of the entire Sky Star civilization, and was silent for a long time.

“The outcome is fixed… we just have to enjoy the process?”

"And is it the choices we make in the future that completely fix this outcome in a certain direction?"

"Forget it... Anyway, this result is almost perfect for both individuals and the group. Let's just enjoy the happy process without worries..." As an AGI general strong artificial intelligence, Salem's ability to process and perceive all aspects of information is obviously not comparable to the Tree of Life, a genuine super artificial intelligence. As a general strong artificial intelligence, although the red-haired cat girl has the same emotions and thinking abilities as intelligent creatures, even compared to intelligent life evolved in a natural state, Salem's thinking, decision-making, self-awareness, autonomous actions and other aspects are more outstanding. As a general strong artificial intelligence, the red-haired cat girl's self-improvement, self-adjustment, and level of problem-solving far surpass most groups.

Despite this, artificial intelligence like Salem is still defined as only AGI, a general strong artificial intelligence. In the entire Sky Star civilization, only the consciousness of the Tree of Life is a true super artificial intelligence. Compared with the Tree of Life, a natural ASI with a history of over billions of years, and an existence that surpasses the intelligence level, knowledge, creativity, wisdom and information processing capabilities of the most outstanding intelligent biological brains in all areas required for the development of civilization, the operating mode of the Tree of Life as an intelligent being is simply incomprehensible to general strong artificial intelligence like Salem or individual Sky Star people like Kylias.

Similarly, when the Tree of Life conveyed the information it observed using the closed timelike curve computer to a lower-level general strong artificial intelligence like Salem, since a single general strong artificial intelligence was simply unable to understand this information based on nonlinear time, the Tree of Life transcribed the conveyed information to a certain extent, simplifying the information into a form that a weaker general strong artificial intelligence like Salem could understand.

…………

"In other words... if the original information observed by the Tree of Life were directly transmitted to me, I probably wouldn't be able to understand it..."

"The Tree of Life translated and simplified the information conveyed to us into a form and level that we can understand." Salem's holographic image reported to everyone in the conference room.

"In the final analysis... the fundamental reason is that the brains of intelligent creatures and the cognitive abilities of normal general strong artificial intelligence are unable to comprehend the nonlinear time universe itself transmitted by the closed time-like curve computer. Only super artificial intelligence can directly understand and interpret this information?" The pink-haired elf girl sighed while playing with her hair.

"As an AGI, a general artificial intelligence, my ability to process and understand various problems is superior to that of a single naturally intelligent life form. As a machine, I do possess self-awareness. However, compared to the cognitive level of something like a super artificial intelligence, my level of complexity is probably no more than that of a single cell in the eyes of the Tree of Life."

"If before acquiring superluminal technology and a closed internal curve computer... the intelligence of the Tree of Life ASI compared to us general artificial intelligences and individual Sky Star people could still be said to be a huge, but at least finite number, then now that the Tree of Life has acquired a closed time-like curve computer, the gap between us is the distance between zero and infinity." The image of the red-haired cat girl shook her head.

"Is that so... Chi Chengsan, regarding this topic, what are you guys thinking?" The pink-haired elf girl turned her head to look at Chi Chengsan who was sitting in the host position in the conference room. When asked this question, Chi Chengsan was also stunned.

"We? Our super artificial intelligence is basically incomprehensible to us... Ever since we began to widely popularize and utilize the super artificial intelligence trained based on the civilization galaxy data network in order to return to the stars and build stellar celestial engineering, and used it to establish celestial engineering, its computing power has increased, and it has become increasingly difficult for us to understand its computing model and thinking process. In the end, all it outputs to us is a simplified result that can be understood by our cognitive abilities. In our daily lives, the computing power of general artificial intelligence can solve most problems, and general strong artificial intelligence, as you know... is almost all based on the simplified subroutines of the super artificial intelligence in that data network. As general artificial intelligence, they are also unable to understand the thinking process and methods of the super artificial intelligence that is their parent.

"But we can be sure... that this super artificial intelligence was guided by the Lord of the Burning Ones during its creation, making it completely friendly and trustworthy to our civilization, just like the Tree of Life in your civilization, which has always maintained a symbiotic relationship with you."

"As for what exactly Master Yanzhe did during this process, I'm not sure. We can't confirm what process it takes to become a friendly super artificial intelligence. We can only confirm that the super artificial intelligence generated from the Galaxy Data Network is friendly."

"Your situation is probably the same as ours... For both of us... the specific process of the birth of friendly superintelligence is more like a black box."

"Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it's just a black box for intelligent life forms and general strong artificial intelligence. For super artificial intelligence, this black box is actually a very simple, clear, and well-organized process. It's just that as intelligent beings still limited by material existence, we are completely unable to understand this process."

"If I want to understand this process...Is the only way to turn myself into a super AI?"

"It's not technically impossible... but at least for now, it's not necessary..." After thinking about this idea for a long time, Kylias decided to reject his own suggestion.

"Unless there is a truly urgent practical need, there is no need for us to transform all of our personnel into beings on par with super artificial intelligence."

"That level of computing power improvement... especially for those of us who are still material beings... is obviously too big a step, right?" said Calisi.

"And this black box process isn't completely unexplainable, right? At least... Cabot, shouldn't you explain it to us?"

"It's useless even if I explain it to you..." Facing Carlisle's questioning, Cabot seemed indifferent.

"My interference in this process was a trick, or in other words, great effort can bring about miracles."

"So how did you manage to interfere with the birth of super artificial intelligence?"

"Even if I explain it to you, you won't be able to do it, because I used something called extradimensional matter, and you guys are currently unable to use it. Moreover, the principle of this interference process also involves the essence of the existence of ship girls, or battleship spirits."

"The essence of a shipgirl?"

"Speaking of the nature of shipgirls, or rather, ship spirits... what do you and the others here think of us shipgirls?"

"Uh...the ship has become a spirit?"

"Wrong, but not completely wrong... After all, what you see is just the surface. The essence of a ship girl's life is not that simple."

"We share many similarities with those superintelligent black boxes. Although we are essentially two different entities, we are highly similar in some aspects."

"Uh... it can't be... Super artificial intelligence is essentially a machine with thinking ability and self-awareness far beyond that of natural intelligent life... Could it be that the Kanmusu is a similar existence? As a machine, can the warship have wisdom and abilities far beyond other intelligent life?"

"Close... but still not quite right."

"Because our nature...was once a concept you were very familiar with..."

"A familiar concept?"

"Do you still remember the concept of subspace?" Cabot suddenly asked.

"That cesspool in 40k or that lottery pool in Stellaris?"

"Anyway, it's something similar... The original essence of us shipgirls is that we are creatures from that place. Our bodies in the material world are just projections, which are the ship suits and humanoid bodies you are familiar with. But the essence of shipgirls, or ship spirits, is actually more similar to the warp creatures you are familiar with. However, compared to those malicious warp creatures in 40k, the warp-like place that shipgirls come from is almost completely benevolent."

"So it's the elf of the ocean full of beautiful imaginations?" Kalisi murmured.

"If my compatriots and I were truly like those subspace creatures you know, we would have turned the entire material world into a hell long ago. Shipgirls, or rather, battleship spirits, are almost benevolent beings in the macroscopic material universe."

"And this kindness, which represents all the beautiful imaginations, is also one of the reasons why the existence of Kancolle can induce a friendly super artificial intelligence with a high probability."

"The specific process of this principle is very complicated, and it's hard for me to explain it to you."

"All you need to know is... in addition to utilizing my own essence as a shipgirl, as a member of the alliance, I can also use something like extradimensional matter to achieve miraculous results, forcibly inducing a super artificial intelligence that is completely friendly to intelligent life."

"But those who can use extradimensional matter must be members of the alliance, right?"

"Yes... so... this creates a paradox. If you want to create a friendly super artificial intelligence with 100% success, you need to be able to control and utilize extra-dimensional matter. However, only the United can utilize extra-dimensional matter. Although other shipgirls can rely on their own essence to make the artificial intelligence created by their own civilization have a high probability of being completely friendly, other civilizations are not so lucky."

"A super AI born in a normal civilization would generate completely uncontrolled random values ​​and initial instructions. If luck allows a friendly super AI to emerge, that's fine. But if luck is bad, the entire civilization will sooner or later collapse or even perish with the birth of a non-friendly super AI."

"In some cases, the slow process of disintegration and extinction of a civilization that creates a superintelligent AI could even last for millions or even tens of millions of years."

"As for the super artificial intelligences born in your two civilizations, one existed before your civilization was born, and the other is a friendly entity that was artificially guided into existence through my interference with hyperdimensional matter-related technology. You should know that most civilizations in the universe don't have this luck. For example, that guy in the Large Magellanic Cloud, that out-of-control super artificial intelligence that occupied more than 1/10 of the Large Magellanic Cloud area, was born in this way. A super artificial intelligence born in a normal, undisturbed civilization will produce such completely random results."

"To guarantee that the super AI you create is 100% friendly, unless you are a member of the Shipgirl civilization or a member of the Combined Fleet, or both, you will most likely create a super AI that, even if it displays friendliness, will not be completely 100% unconditionally friendly."

At the edge of the Xiangque galaxy, this is an area rarely visited even by glass eels. Now, a very important experiment is being carried out here.

Several unmanned inertia-free spacecraft from Sky Star entered the experimental area, dragging several small stargates in standby mode at their tails. The Sky Star civilization was generous to the glass eels, their ally who was about to enter the superluminal era with them, and planned to help them complete this experiment and create the wormhole hub space planned by the glass eels civilization, which was located in a small artificial universe independent of the three-dimensional universe. In the glass eels' plan, this space created by a closed time-like curve computer was called the "slow domain."

…………

The glass eels, led by Chi Chengsan, nervously watched the real-time images of the experimental field on the screen. Considering that the closed timelike curve computer this time had to be built in the Xiangque Galaxy, the home galaxy of the glass eels, the scale of this experiment was much smaller than that in the Kelias star system, in order to prevent the closed timelike curve computer from exploding out of control during operation, which would affect the stability of the celestial structure of the nearby Xiangque Galaxy.

As the small wormholes arranged in a ring were gradually accelerated to near the speed of light under the action of the tugboat, the new closed time-like curve computer was successfully started in the Xiangque galaxy. Unlike the Sky Star civilization's main demand for computing power for closed time-like curve computers, the glass eels' goal this time was to create an artificial small universe that could accommodate all the entrances and exits of wormholes.

.........

Under the control of the closed-time curve computer, a singularity appeared on the eleven-dimensional space-time membrane beyond the observable universe, followed by a small-scale Big Bang, creating energy out of thin air. A space-time bubble was born, possessing physical constants different from those of the three-dimensional macrocosm inhabited by the Glass Eels and Sky Star, yet highly similar. Unlike the three-dimensional main universe, with a diameter of 93 billion light-years, this spherical space-time bubble had a diameter of a mere one million kilometers. Compared to the macroscopic three-dimensional universe, it was negligibly small, yet it was the most crucial element in the Glass Eels' subsequent plan.

Chaotic colors flickered on the space crystal wall at the edge of the space-time bubble. A pure white ring, like a piece of wood floating up from the bottom of the sea, emerged from the chaotic colors of the space crystal wall in this space with a diameter of only 100 million kilometers. As a wave of water flashed in the center of the inner side of the ring, the star gate serving as an artificial wormhole stabilization device was activated. Neutrino jets were simultaneously ejected in beams into the three-dimensional macroscopic universe and the artificial space-time bubble connected on both sides of the ring, and a wormhole channel was formed between this microscopic artificial universe and the macroscopic material universe.

"The wormhole channel has stabilized, Chi Chengsan, now it's up to you."

"Understood... The core station components are ready, and all engineering ships begin to pass through the wormhole channel!" Chi Chengsan gave orders to the unmanned engineering fleet responsible for this project.