The Source (Bonus Chapter for Alliance Leader Lan Yin)

It wasn't until the sun rose in the east and the morning sun bathed the earth that Xiang Kun finally stopped revising the PRD. Looking at the plan, which was completely different from the original idea, he couldn't help but rub his temples, as if his old habit had flared up again...

Finally, the AI assistant he envisioned was already a large-scale project in terms of its numerous functional modules and complexity. Moreover, some of its functions relied on technologies that were not yet mature or readily available for reference. Even for giants like Baidu, Google, and Microsoft, it would not be an easy task, let alone for him alone.

If he had received such a requirements document a little over a month ago while still working, he would probably have slapped the product manager in the face and told him to rewrite it after he sobered up.

But now, he wrote this document himself, and he made these requirements himself...

So he was still somewhat unwilling to give up and wanted to try it out to see how far he could go.

However, when he started doing what he was truly good at again, he found that he could more directly feel the changes in his brain's thinking patterns and calculation speed, and his overall level of excitement also became higher.

Current AI assistants are already quite intelligent. For example, if you ask, "What will the weather be like tomorrow?"

AI first uses speech recognition technology to convert your voice into text, then analyzes your intent and extracts keywords to "fill in the gaps".

There are two "slots" in this sentence, one is the time "tomorrow" and the other is the event "weather".

The command was executed, the weather forecast program was invoked, the weather forecast for tomorrow was checked, and the results were reported.

If some AIs need to continue the conversation, they might even add, "Are you traveling tomorrow?"

If new keywords are obtained, a new round of slot filling will begin to assist users in handling various tasks.

Ultimately, it relies on keywords to trigger preset feedback. However, AI is constantly evolving, with a higher success rate in recognizing true intentions and providing more comprehensive and human-like feedback, making it seem more and more "alive".

However, in reality, current AI is still a long way from being a form of artificial intelligence with self-awareness.

Xiang Kun didn't expect to create an AI with self-awareness on his own. He just wanted to use "reinforcement learning" combined with "deep learning" to have this AI assistant continuously improve his "Vampire Mutation Model." Based on the model's output, the assistant would conduct targeted online searches in medicine, biology, physics, and even news, selecting potentially useful content for him to browse. Then, based on his actual choices, the assistant would refine the search rules and decisions for the future.

In terms of daily life and training, the AI assistant will also provide him with suggestions through the "Vampire Mutation Model," and will spontaneously raise some issues that he may have overlooked, suggest new directions that can be tried, and assist him in conducting experiments and recording parameters.

He also hopes that the AI assistant can help him analyze and monitor his daily life behavior and online operations to identify any unusual details that might be noticed by others, and propose solutions to help him keep the secret of his mutation.

After spending a whole day on it, Xiang Kun had a rough implementation framework, marked the implementation methods for most of the functions, and identified the major technical challenges that needed to be addressed.

But the deeper Xiang Kun, the clearer it became that this project was not something he could complete alone in a short period of time.

Although many features have open-source code and datasets available online, integration still requires considerable time. Moreover, many features must be developed from scratch.

He is now much more capable than he used to be; it wouldn't be a problem to say that he is as good as 10 people, and he can work 24 hours a day without interruption.

However, many constraints are still beyond his current ability to resolve. Not to mention manpower, his current hardware facilities are also insufficient to support the planned development. Not only do he need to replace his computers, but he also needs cloud services with greater bandwidth and higher computing power, and even needs to customize some terminal devices.

"Looks like I either have to find a shortcut or become incredibly rich, like Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne..." Xiang Kun muttered to himself, rubbing his bald head.

However, he did not intend to go back to his original needs and make a very simple version of the AI assistant for the time being. It's like having imagined a full-course banquet, but seeing a cold, hard steamed bun in front of you, you really can't bring yourself to eat it unless you're starving.

He plans to start with the speech synthesis function, since this function will be essential no matter what kind of AI assistant it becomes in the end.

And just like in a game, players always like to customize their character's appearance before allocating specific attribute points. For an AI assistant that has no physical form, its voice can be considered its face.

Speech synthesis technology is now relatively mature, and in addition to a few major companies, there are many open-source toolkits available online that can be used directly.

However, Xiang Kun's obsessive-compulsive disorder flared up again. One moment he was still not satisfied with the smoothness of the voice, and the next he was not satisfied with the timbre of the existing female voice.

At 11 a. m. on September 13, Xiang Kun received a package from JD.com, and temporarily put aside his concerns about synthesized speech, eagerly opening the package.

The magnetic field detector and microscope arrived together. After confirming that the items were in good condition and undamaged, Xiang Kun prepared to start testing with the magnetic field detector.

This detector can measure low frequencies from 5Hz to 400kHz and high frequencies from 300MHz to 3000MHz. It can also switch between magnetic field testing modes, with accuracies of 1V/m and 0.01μm.

He first took the handheld testing device close to various electrical appliances to confirm that their readings were normal and their functions were working properly.

Then he took the detector and sat down in front of the canary's cage. Since the cage was opened the day before yesterday, it hadn't come out and was still very "well-behaved" in its own territory.

Watching the canary chirp twice, Xiang Kun thought for a moment, then got up and went to the kitchen to use the remaining two rabbits for his experiment.

However, to his disappointment, during the process of using "intimidation" to exert various effects on the rabbits, the readings on the detector did not change significantly.

"Was my previous guess wrong? Or was the detector I bought too cheap and not sensitive enough?" Xiang Kun muttered to himself, then put the detector aside and started fiddling with the microscope.

Instead of immediately testing his own cells or blood, he first used a lancet to collect a small amount of blood from the rabbit. He didn't prepare a smear; he simply added a few drops of saline solution and considered it a slide for observation.

The microscope he bought has an eyepiece connected to a monitor, which can be directly connected to a computer screen, so he can observe directly using the computer screen.

The rabbit blood wasn't anything special; it was just a way for him to familiarize himself with the microscope, which he hadn't used since middle school, and to serve as a simple reference, so he didn't do much observation with it.

Next, he found some microscopic images of human blood online and watched videos of other people observing human blood under a microscope, also for reference.

Only then did they take their own blood to begin the observation.

Xiang Kun did not perform a smear because he wanted to observe his blood more naturally, knowing that his blood would undergo drastic changes within ten minutes.

Thank you to readers Suiyingxh, QuietRain, Chitiankongdehailan, and reader 161022020342609 for their donations.