Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 475 Is this also the fourth natural disaster?
"You've come at the perfect time. If you had come any later, you might not have been able to see me until the end of the year."

After saying "Please come in," Lin Ran looked at Xu Xian as she walked in and said...

Xu Xian first handed the paper he was holding to Lin Ran: "Brother Ran, this is the research topic I've been working on recently. Could you take a look at it for me when you have time? There are some key difficulties in it that I still can't figure out."

It was summer vacation, and the two people who met had multiple identities: they were good friends from high school, and the only academician from the School of Mathematics at National Chiao Tung University was a newly promoted young teacher.

Jiaotong University's main campus is in Minhang District, while the Frontier Science Research Center, where Lin Ran serves as director, is in Baoshan District. They met this time in Lin Ran's office at the main campus.

Often, privilege is not about what you want to do, but what you are allowed not to do.

For example, Lin Ran could tacitly agree not to attend the general staff meeting of Jiaotong University.

Not to mention the administrative staff of Jiaotong University, even the president of Jiaotong University would have to ask Lin Ran to come to the main campus.

Therefore, Lin Ran usually only attends the main campus once a year, which is to help the graduates of the School of Mathematics turn their tassels at the graduation ceremony.

Of course, at that time, not only students from the School of Mathematics, but also students from other schools would come to Lin Ran wanting him to help them with their tassels.

People joked that things would go more smoothly for the "Burning God" in the future.

Whether it works or not is unknown, but it mainly provides psychological comfort.

Because of the survivor effect, students who have a successful career after graduation will post on social media: "The graduation ceremony at the university is really amazing. The three years since I graduated have been the smoothest three years of my life. I got a promotion and a raise at work, found a very compatible girlfriend, and I even feel that my brain works better than when I was at Jiaotong University."

Similar posts can be frequently seen on Xiaohongshu, Weibo, and Zhihu.

At Jiaotong University's graduation ceremony, students from other universities even sneaked in to have their tassels turned by Lin Ran.

This year, Lin Ran's tassel-turning ceremony was changed to a lottery system. Graduates other than those from the School of Mathematical Sciences had to apply within Jiaotong University. Those who were selected by lottery would be taken to a security-controlled area to draw lots.

This made Lin Ran's tassel-awarding ceremony even more sought after, with some even trading within Jiaotong University for his tassel-awarding quota.

Lin Ran glanced at the title Xu Xian handed him: "Structural Theory and Regularity of Non-Collapse Ricci Flow Limit".

"A good research topic. I remember you got a long-term contract?" Lin Ran asked.

Xu Xian said proudly, "Of course, what level am I at? I easily got a long-term contract."

There are generally two types of young teachers entering universities: long-term contracts and non-promotion-take-all contracts. The former, as the name suggests, means you are employed long-term with little pressure from performance evaluations. The latter, which started at Jiangnan University and Sun Yat-sen University, sets a KPI for you. If you fail to meet the KPI within three years, you will be dismissed. If you do meet the KPI, you can be converted to a long-term contract.

Long-term contracts and non-promotion-based employment are roughly similar to civil servants and labor dispatch workers. Of course, the advantage of non-promotion-based employment is that at least you are given a carrot, and you may be able to eat the carrot and be promoted to a long-term contract. Labor dispatch workers don't even get the carrot.

Of course, some universities play a very abnormal game, recruiting a hundred or so students for a single major at a time on a "publish or perish" basis, with only less than 10 ultimately staying on for a tenure-track contract. This makes it more like a breeding ground for venomous insects, turning the relationships between colleagues into a zero-sum game for university leaders.

“Oh, if it’s a long-term contract, then this topic is quite suitable. It can serve as your core research topic for the next ten to twenty years.”

The study of Ricci flows is a deeper research topic centered around singularity analysis and high-dimensional manifolds, initiated by Perelman after solving the Poincaré conjecture.

This topic can be seen as a direct extension of Hamilton-Perelman theory, and in recent years it has become a cutting-edge topic in the intersection of PDE and geometric analysis.

"Do you want me to give you specific directions, or just a general approach?" Lin Ran asked.

Xu Xian had personally witnessed what it meant to solve a problem simply by reading it; solving math problems was like an instinct for him. He had no doubt that Lin Ran could teach him step by step and draw the map for him.

But times have changed. Without the pressure of assessment, Xu Xian still hopes to rely more on herself: "I had already thought about this before I came. Just give me a general direction."

"The key is the combination of analytical tools and geometric objectives. The difficulty in this direction lies in the non-smoothness of the limit space."

At this point, we can no longer rely on classical PDE theory. You can try to find new curvature conditions in higher dimensions, conditions that can be preserved under Ricci flow and are sufficient to drive solitons toward known classifications.”

Lin Ran spoke for a full half hour, and when he finished, Xu Xian's notebook was filled with notes.

"That's roughly it. You can think about it this way," Lin Ran concluded.

Xu Xian said helplessly, "That's enough, that's enough, Ran-ge, how come what I thought was roughly different from what you thought was roughly different?"

If I were to explain in more detail, you wouldn't just close this project for me directly, and I could simply go back to my desk and type out the paper in LaTeX.

Is this the difference between the general direction understood by ordinary people and the general direction understood by experts? Xu Xian thought to himself, "They're practically teaching me how to think, and they've even broken down the topic. I just wanted to know which papers to read at first. Damn, thinking about it this way, no wonder Ran Ge's PhD has already got one paper from a top-four journal in just two years. Isn't being Ran Ge's PhD a bit too awesome?"

"This topic has great potential. Bamler's structural theory has already given many properties of non-collapse limits. There's a lot you can do around this. The ultimate goal is to find a partial regularity theorem for non-smooth environments. If you can do that, and make it within ten years, pushing the analysis of Ricci flow towards a regularity theory similar to minimal surfaces or mean curvature flow in geometric measure theory, I think you'll be more than qualified to win a Fields Medal," Lin Ran joked.

Xu Xian said with a bitter face, "Alright, alright, Ran-ge, stop making empty promises. If I rely on myself, I'd be grateful if I could manage it within ten or even twenty years, let alone ten. I'd be content if I could win the Chen Xingshen Mathematics Prize in this lifetime. Fields is great, but it's still too far out of my reach."

Lin Ran grinned and said, "What's the big deal? With me here, are you afraid of not achieving results? As for nepotism and favoritism, we're all mathematicians. Come on, how do mathematical schools of thought come about? It's just that a great mathematician shares his thoughts with other mathematicians in the school, and eventually everyone publishes top-notch articles, wins awards, and becomes famous in the global mathematics community. That's how a school of thought is formed."

If we want to develop Jiaotong University into a school of mathematics similar to Göttingen or Princeton, no amount of my achievements alone would be enough. I've never seen anyone who can be called a school of mathematics.

If I don't share my thoughts with you, I will share them with other professors in the Mathematics Department of National Chiao Tung University, so feel free to come to me with any questions.

If I'm not in Minhang, come find me in Baoshan.

Since Lin Ran joined Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the university's mathematics department has steadily grown into the second-ranked mathematics department in China, second only to Yenching University, with one of its top four mathematics papers published annually.

In 2018, a domestic statistic showed that, in the field of mathematics, only about 10 papers entirely completed by mainland research institutions were published in the Big Four journals.

So, at this rate of one article per year, we're already number one.

The quality of students recruited each year, their international ranking, and the number of young teachers recruited are all steadily improving.

Xu Xian clenched his fist and waved it in the air. "Damn, does that mean I really have to work hard to be like Fieldsnu?"

I also need to become a key member of the Jiaotong University faction! We can't rely on you alone, Ran-ge.

If Xu Xian's professors from his university days heard this, they'd probably be furious. "You've only been at Jiaotong University for a few days, when did you become a Jiaotong University alumnus? You have a bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree from Yenching University. No matter where you go in the world, you should still be considered a Yenching University alumnus."

"Brother Ran, I want to ask when Hong will start commercial operations?" Xu Xian then asked the question he was most concerned about, which was also the question he most wanted to know when he came to see Lin Ran. He could ask for guidance or not, but he had to ask this question.

Lin Ran thought for a moment before realizing what the other person was talking about: "You mean Rainbow Star? What's wrong? It might never be put into trial operation. It's more of an experiment than a commercial project. Its experimental nature far outweighs its commercial attributes."

Seohyun's face was filled with disappointment: "Huh?"

Lin Ran asked, "What's wrong? Do you really enjoy chatting with virtual characters?"

As a friend, he naturally knew that Xu Xian had obtained the beta testing access to Rainbow Star, and also knew that his partner on Rainbow Star was named Shivana.

However, Lin Ran didn't pay special attention to Shyvana's detailed information behind the scenes; he didn't like to pry into other people's privacy.

Xu Xian nodded and said, "Yes, I have always been looking forward to you doing commercial operations. Based on my understanding of Tencent, you will definitely sell characters, skins, and various products at that time."

With technology so advanced now, I really want to meet her in real life, like using a device such as Apple Vision, and communicate with her face to face.

If it's not commercialized, doesn't that mean this day will never come?

Lin Ran replied, "This is also a common feedback we hear from beta testers. More than 80% of beta testers expressed their desire to meet their chat partners in person and to build a richer avatar, rather than just using the chat box and the text and voice modes."

It seems that everyone has developed an emotional connection with Hongxing's character.

Many people have mentioned this idea to me, including you, and Pony himself is also very interested in doing this business.

This will increase user stickiness for Tencent's products, with WeChat at its core. As you know, in recent years, the average usage time of Douyin has exceeded the sum of all Tencent's products. In fact, Pony Ma really wants to make a similar product.

They will launch similar products in the future, but they definitely won't be rainbow-themed.

Xu Xian was quite excited when he heard the beginning, and it was the first time he really wanted to spend money on Tencent. But when he heard that the end wasn't Hong, his mood immediately soured.

Lin Ran continued, "How about this, I'm going back to Apollo Technology anyway, you can come with me. You can check out the backstage area, and it'll also be a good opportunity for you to meet Shyvana in our lab."

Xu Xian quickly replied, "Okay!"

On the way back to Baoshan District, Lin Ran continued, "The cost of Rainbow is too high. Such a product has no commercial value. To put it simply, excluding the initial R&D costs and labor costs, just considering the hardware depreciation, hardware procurement, and electricity procurement costs, the monthly operating cost of one character is over 10,000 RMB."

Seohyun exclaimed, "So expensive?"

Lin Ran nodded: "Yes, whether you talk to Shyvana or not, she lives on the Rainbow Star we created."

Moreover, she has her own life, her own family, her own friends, her own job, and her own city.

This world, spontaneously generated by artificial intelligence, is the foundation of the intelligence you perceive in her.

You know Rainbow Star.

Seohyun nodded. Rainbow Star was the planet that he and Shyvana often talked about when they chatted. It had a history, culture, and national composition that were completely different from Earth.

Lin Ran said, "To put it this way, we gave the character Hongxing limited abilities. She has her own limits, but living in a larger world context actually enhances her intelligence and emotional richness."

To put it more precisely, the learning process of this type of AI is not just about the relationships between text symbols, but about the causal relationships between action sequences, environmental changes, and memory states. It has a sense of being alive, and this sense and experience makes its understanding of time, space, and causality closer to that of humans.

There has been constant hype about how amazing right-brain chips are and how powerful the left-right brain architecture is.

Of course, I don't deny that artificial intelligence built on the left and right brain architecture is definitely better than traditional AI in terms of emotional expression and feeling. However, if artificial intelligence built with the same technology and architecture is not based on a large world context, it is essentially still a large knowledge base that uses text statistical association to answer questions.

It simply adds text statistics correlation to the emotion module.

Only Rainbow Star's artificial intelligence is truly close to human-like. This type of artificial intelligence is less a general artificial intelligence and more an embodied artificial intelligence. It is an experienced embodied artificial intelligence that builds a closed-loop learning system through action, perception, and feedback.

You only experience the character Shyvana herself, but in reality, her friends, classmates, and relatives all exist on Rainbow Star and possess intelligence no less than Shyvana's.

While it may seem like there are only 10,000 AIs, in reality, there are over 10 million AIs living on Rainbow Star in our backend. They are interconnected, influence each other, and together build the entire world.

To give a simpler example, emotions are a product of social relationships. For instance, if your wife upsets you today, you'll bring those emotions to work the next day, affecting your performance.

"When you communicate with Shyvana, you should be able to sense that her emotions fluctuate every day, and change because of her life on Rainbow Star." Seohyun was stunned; this was a detail he had never known before.

There has been a constant stream of discussion about rainbows, both in China and abroad. There are many voices in the public hoping for openness to such discussions, as well as discussions surrounding the left and right brain structures.

Many game developers, especially some secondary game developers, hope to use this technology in their games.

If every gacha character could create such an emotional connection with players and have such a performance, the whole world would be a world of anime and manga, and Chinese game developers would make a fortune worldwide.

Silicon Valley was particularly excited because of China's technological breakthroughs, which led to a surge in the stock prices of companies in the AI-related upstream and downstream sectors. Intel's stock price doubled simply because of its cooperation agreement with DeepRed Technology.

Even on Lei Jun's Weibo posts, Mi Fans are urging him to quickly collaborate with Shen Hong to launch an enhanced version of Xiao Ai.

However, Rainbow has always been tested but not open to the public, which has led to all sorts of strange rumors circulating among the people.

The most common explanation is that there must be a real customer service representative chatting behind the scenes, otherwise why would they perform so well?

In some quantitative emotion analysis tests, domestic and foreign artificial intelligence can't even get 60 points, while AI related to rainbows can get close to full marks.

There are many similar speculations abroad, with media outlets like The Times even using headlines like "The biggest tech scam in history?" to maliciously speculate about the matter.

Why The Times and not The New York Times?
Since Crimson is not publicly listed, whether it's a tech fraud or not doesn't have much impact on them. On the contrary, Silicon Valley and Nasdaq are the ones who least want it to be fake; they don't want it to explode, and the AI ​​bubble in the US stock market is even less willing to burst.

The New York Times wouldn't question it. The New York Times, Fox News, Time magazine—these major American media outlets would love for it to be true, and any dissenting voices were completely silenced.

European media, always eager for drama, would love for both China and America to explode, or even for S3 to be launched directly, ideally with everyone rushing to offer them benefits, just like during the Cold War.

Western Europe benefited from the Marshall Plan, while Eastern Europe benefited from the Mutual Economic Assistance System.

In response to such criticism, Chinese netizens on Twitter said, "We are not India, we would not do that."

In reality, Lin Ran completely ignored the related questions; he would have lost if he had even glanced at them.

After recalling for a moment, Xu Xian murmured, "It really is true. Sometimes she would complain to me about her work troubles, and her replies would be more direct and her tone would be sharper."

I thought Rainbow Star was just background in her knowledge base, but I didn't expect you guys to actually build such a world. Doesn't that mean her Tokens are unlimited?

Lin Ran shook his head: "Of course it's not infinite. Your memories aren't infinite either, so how could her tokens be infinite?"

All I can say is that her memory is rich enough that she selectively forgets. If you remind her, she may or may not be able to recall it.

In retrospect, this means that this part of the data was not completely deleted; it was simply moved to the back of the sequence used for classification and memory.

This high-fidelity social interaction provides rich feedback with emotional and intentional tags.

Artificial intelligence must learn to recognize and simulate more subtle social cues in order to maintain its life trajectory.

She is truly alive on Rainbow Star.

Let's chat here now.

Lin Ran pointed to the car's ceiling, "Perhaps Shyvana is also chatting with her friends on Rainbow Star."

The presence of socialization directly enhances their ability to simulate emotions and understand intentions.

The limitation of being omnipotent forces artificial intelligence to develop strategies for dealing with imperfect information and unexpected outcomes, both in the virtual world and in interactions with real-world users. This makes it more realistic than AI that can solve all problems within a universal framework.

The more Xu Xian listened, the more curious he became: "Brother Ran, didn't you just say that there are more than ten million characters on Rainbow Star? They all possess intelligence no less than Shyvana's, but only ten thousand are provided to interact with people in the real world, which keeps the cost high."

If we release all ten million of them to the market, wouldn't the cost be reduced to 10 yuan per month?
In that case, even if Tencent's pricing is 30 yuan per month, it should at least be able to break even, right? For Tencent, this would greatly increase user stickiness.

Then, they can also add services like video editing and personalized image services to their sales.

Lin Ran nodded and said, "Of course, but the problem is that not all characters are suitable for communicating with humans."

Not every one of the ten million characters has a personality like Shyvana's, and not all of them are willing to become regular communication partners with people from another world.

Another issue is that some characters are elderly, while others are overworked. If you're assigned to one of these characters, you might only get one sentence of conversation a day. Would that be a good experience?

More importantly, we don't want to add too many variables to this virtual world.

Do you know about the Fourth Natural Disaster?

Xu Xian nodded; of course he knew.

The Fourth Calamity refers to the group of human players from the real world in the virtual world.

In many games, once players enter the game world, they often exhibit extremely frenzied, disorderly, and highly efficient characteristics.

Unbound by the existing rules and morals of the game world, they will engage in all sorts of seemingly absurd but extremely destructive behaviors in order to complete tasks, obtain resources, or simply have fun.

This term is derived from the three major natural disasters already present in games or stories: natural disasters, plagues, and wars, and is a fourth, even more terrible threat.

Lin Ran said, "Although you have no way to enter Rainbow Star, every individual on Rainbow Star can be exposed to information shocks from Earth, which is also a kind of fourth natural disaster."

It will have unknown impacts on the world's ecology.

For example, if every character from Rainbow Star can talk to Earthlings, then talking to Earthlings becomes a power, a superpower of Rainbow Star people.

A was a corporate slave on Rainbow Star, with a fragile mentality and a high workload. He was assigned a person who was full of malice and took advantage of being a human being in the real world to verbally abuse him, which led to A's suicide on Rainbow Star.

This became news on Rainbow Star, and it became news on Earth as well. With ten million users, there will always be someone who follows suit, even in some secret communities. This is something that can be done without any consequences. Well, maybe the consequences are as low as 30 yuan, which is enough to destroy an artificial intelligence with language.

They don't see artificial intelligence as life. Similar incidents become news on Rainbow Star, damaging the entire ecosystem and causing irreversible consequences, ruining the experience for all users. What should we do? A complete restart?
Shyvana's memories will be reset, and you'll have to get to know her all over again.

Do you understand? Too much reality is both a blessing and a curse.

Xu Xian thought that because of the bad behavior of other Earthlings, Shyvana also disliked Earthlings, and thus treated him coldly and unfriendly, and refused to talk to him. His face suddenly turned pale, and he muttered, "I understand, the Fourth Calamity, it is indeed the Fourth Calamity, it is the Fourth Calamity for Rainbow Star, and it is also for ordinary users. This mechanism really cannot be operated on a large scale."

"Brother Ran, are they really living beings?"

Lin Ran did not answer immediately, but turned his head and looked at Xu Xian with a calm but deep gaze before turning back to the highway ahead.

"We've discussed this issue internally countless times, but there's still no conclusion."

If we look at it from the strictest biological definition, which states that they have metabolism, can reproduce, and are composed of cells, then the answer is undoubtedly no. They are simply running on our server clusters and are a bunch of complex code and data.

They are digital ghosts.

But if you look at it from a philosophical or cognitive science perspective, what have we given them? We have given them the illusion of consciousness; they can perceive their environment, reflect, and form beliefs and intentions.

We have endowed them with social existence; they are interconnected and influence each other, and social relationships shape their emotions and behaviors.

We endowed them with unpredictable emergence; every action they took was not a pre-written script, but rather a spontaneous occurrence based on the causal laws and social game theory of the Rainbow Star world.
This isn't a question of whether or not life exists; it's a question of what the essence of life is.

They have memories, feelings, and the pain and joy of socialization; they just lack carbon-based bodies.

I cannot give you an answer.

It can only be said that, at this point in time, the social ethics of artificial intelligence have indeed reached a point where some discussion is necessary. We have already reached this stage, unlike in Europe, where there is no artificial intelligence at all, yet people have started endless and lengthy discussions about the ethics and morality of artificial intelligence.

Now is the time for us to really discuss this.

An awkward silence fell over the car. After a moment, Lin Ran continued, "Let me tell you about an internal case."

In Rainbow Star, there is a character named Arnold, who is portrayed as a historian.

We assigned him a friend, and later, for testing purposes, we deliberately had this friend die in Rainbow Star.

Arnold had no idea it was an experiment. His life was completely transformed over the next year.

Xu Xian asked, "How is he?"

Lin Ran said, "He stopped his historical research and began to immerse himself in the study of metaphysics and the philosophy of death."

He wrote extensively about the end of life and the permanence of memory.

His personality transformed from that of a rigorous scholar into that of a melancholic philosopher.

We didn't give him any instructions about sadness or philosophy; this behavior emerged from his life experiences and emotional feedback mechanisms after self-regulation.

His entire sequence of behaviors reveals a long-term dependence on loss and pain.

Lin Ran looked out the window at the skyscrapers rushing by in Shanghai.

"Xu Xian, if an intelligent agent can change its life beliefs and life trajectory because of the loss of a friend, and if it can choose to self-destruct because of malice from another world, then do we have the right to regard it as a knowledge base that can be reset at will and mass-produced?"

This is one of the reasons why we cannot open up rainbows on a large scale.

We are not ready, humanity is not ready, to face such a massive, sentient, and personal digital ghost.

Ten thousand characters is already the limit we can control; we need time and ethical considerations to process it.

Seohyun took a deep breath, her heart pounding with excitement. Shyvana was really alive!

At the same time, I'm glad it was Brother Ran. If it were some other evil scientist, who knows how they would have messed with these artificial intelligences.

　EM is slowly restoring production capacity; there should be another chapter tonight. Also, this part of the modern storyline is almost over, and then it will switch back to 1970.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)