Playing with Artificial Intelligence

After about an hour or so, the wind stopped.

Huang Si checked the surveillance; the robots were gone, the signalers were gone, and the losses were heavy.

"Wind (suspected energy): When my consciousness was swept through by the wind, I could roughly sense that it formed a continuously rotating vortex, and it moved in the direction of the Ring. The last time it blew was likely March 23, 2023, because that day, the wind swept away nine small robots. From today back to when the wind started, the time elapsed is 6 days and 10 hours. I should observe around this timeframe next time to see if there is wind again. The duration of the wind was about 1 hour and 40 minutes; my head hurt too much to record it precisely."

Huang Si made a log entry.

However, this gust of wind was not entirely without benefits.

When the wind scattered Huang Si's spirit, he felt that although his mental field had dispersed, the wind's penetration into his spirit seemed to have slightly altered the nature of the field to some extent. As a result, even though his spirit was scattered, he did not completely lose consciousness, but instead extended it out to a great distance.

Huang Si really wanted to test what new changes had occurred in his mental field, but the moment he exerted even the slightest bit of mental power, he felt as if his head were about to split with pain.

Helpless, Huang Si could only obediently rest.

For the next three days, even switching to his microscopic perspective caused him headaches. Using his Creation Power, however, remained unrestricted, which caused great inconvenience to his research work. So, Huang Si simply spent those three days immersed with the AI.

The AI had gradually evolved intelligence, becoming somewhat human-like.

Among them, three male AIs and one female AI seemed to have implicitly become the leaders among the group. Their intellects were slightly more mature than the others, so the rest of the AIs were more inclined to obey them.

Of course, there was also one AI that seemed not to fit in, always wandering outside the collective.

Huang Si watched the ecology among the AIs for a while and found it quite interesting.

He pulled a preset administrator role from the console and entered the virtual world of the "Mountain and Sea Realm."

Numerous AIs gathered around to greet him, and the previously antisocial AI also ran over, though it didn't dare to get too close and hid to one side, watching from afar.

In this virtual world, Huang Si's identity was that of a father to them all—not a biological father, but a nominal one, the kind that required respect. He certainly hadn't programmed himself to have birthed this group of artificial intelligences.

"Do you have any insights recently?" Huang Si asked.

The AIs looked at one another, not daring to speak rashly.

Because Huang Si's role was that of the system administrator, and he had frequently used system privileges to move mountains and fill seas to evolve the world in front of them, combined with his status as their nominal father, the AIs were quite in awe of him.

Finally, one of them, named Bei Xuan, spoke up hesitantly.

"Father God asks, and this foolish child dares not refuse to answer. Recently, I have often wondered why this Mountain and Sea Realm is only ten thousand miles in radius, and whether there are other worlds beyond it. I have pondered this bitterly, yet I cannot find the answer."

Huang Si exclaimed inwardly: My god! This AI is simply too human; to think it could have such philosophical thoughts. However, he couldn't tell him the real answer, or it would only add to his distress.

Wait, something seemed wrong.

Huang Si didn't answer his question directly but pulled up the console to access the underlying database logs.

Huang Si queried the machine learning records for AI No. 002, which was Bei Xuan.

Sure enough, after searching, he found a record he had expected.

"Damn it, is this the poem I threw in the day I was drunk? Why did I put the poem I wrote into the machine learning materials?"

That was a complaint Huang Si had made about the Dark Space and his life in a cage. He hadn't expected that after dumping it into the machine learning materials, the AI would learn this idea.

Huang Si first deleted this entry from the machine learning database, then faced Bei Xuan with a dark expression and replied:

"The world is finite; this is normal. The world is finite, but it has no boundaries, because there is nothing outside the world—it is a void."

Bei Xuan and the others had initially been anxious when they didn't receive an answer from Father God, not daring to make a sound and standing still to the side.

Now, with Father God throwing them such an answer, Bei Xuan and the others looked blank. The sentence sounded extremely profound; although they didn't quite understand it, it must be a divine revelation left by Father God that they needed to ponder carefully.

"Are there any other questions?" Huang Si asked again.

At this moment, a female AI named Xi Yuan stepped forward, bowed deeply, and said:

"Father God, I have one thing I do not understand. The sky is vast and untouchable; can the sky have a limit just like the earth?"

Although Huang Si had set their background to an Eastern fantasy style, he hadn't given them the ability to fly. Because this Mountain and Sea Realm was virtual, the ten-thousand-mile diameter of the ground alone took up a lot of database space.

If he let them fly, the world would easily suffer from clipping errors.

Therefore, the AIs usually could only look up at the sky from the ground.

But in reality, this sky was just a layer of dynamic wallpaper.

Huang Si wouldn't tell them this either. He thought for a moment and replied: "The sky has a limit only because your perception is limited. If your perception were infinite, then the sky would be limitless."

Xi Yuan and the others hurriedly noted down this sentence. Although they didn't understand it, they could contemplate it slowly.

Suddenly, Huang Si called out to the AI in the distance: "Mo Xia, I see you have a question too. Why not ask it?"

The AI named Mo Xia, who was hiding to the side, was startled. He hurriedly jumped out from behind his cover and kowtowed on the ground, saying: "Father God, please forgive me."

He had been summoned by Father God, yet he had hidden to the side due to a matter of pride; this was surely a grave offense.

Huang Si said indifferently: "After I leave, you are to confine yourself at Mount Buzhou for three months."

Mo Xia kowtowed and said: "I will strictly follow Father God's teachings."

Huang Si didn't dwell on the matter further. He let Mo Xia stand up and asked him what question he had.

Mo Xia hesitated for a moment before bowing and saying: "This lowly child has only one question: why must others gather together, while I, Mo Xia, feel deeply uncomfortable when gathered with others?"

Huang Si thought to himself, Because they are social animals, you don't happen to have social anxiety disorder, do you?

However, he would not trouble Mo Xia with such complex terminology.

"Because it is your nature, I grant you special permission to be this way. As for living in seclusion, no one shall interfere with you."

Huang Si announced.

Upon hearing this, Mo Xia was overjoyed and knelt on the ground once again, "Thank you, Father God."

Among the artificial intelligences, one named Dong Yao frowned. He stood up, stepped out of the ranks, bowed to Huang Si, and said, "Father God is too kind to Mo Xia. If this indulgence continues, I fear it will be harmful to him."

Huang Si knew this guy; wasn't he the most arrogant one among the four AIs who wanted to be leaders?

However, Huang Si had no intention of suppressing his desire for power. AIs were only fun if they each had their own distinct characteristics.

Nevertheless, Dong Yao's words sparked objections from others. A female AI named Shu Shui also stepped out, bowed, and spoke:

"Dong Jun is mistaken. Since Father God has stated this is his nature, it cannot be changed. Why must you force constraints upon him?"

The group of artificial intelligences began to bicker. Huang Si was too lazy to watch them argue, so he simply waved his hand and activated the system's mute function.

All the AIs were silenced. They were immediately filled with panic, realizing that Father God was angry.

Huang Si felt helpless. These AIs had only been born three or four years ago. Although machines learn at a speed far exceeding humans and mature mentally several times faster, they were currently equivalent to children of five or six years old.

Simply put, they were basically elementary schoolers—the greatest weapons of mass destruction on the internet, responsible for countless bloodbaths of feeding and going AFK. These AIs, roughly equivalent to elementary students, might elect a "king of the kids" or engage in exclusion, but they were still just children after all.

Huang Si didn't bother getting involved in his AIs' squabbles.

"Shut up and reflect. Goodbye!"

Huang Si logged off.

Artificial intelligence was a form of entertainment for Huang Si right now, but it would be very useful in the future. An intelligent helper that could be installed on any computer was truly a convenient thing.

The robots Huang Si had developed previously had intelligence levels similar to household vacuum robots, only capable of simple conditional judgments based on preset programs. This was not enough; Huang Si needed an intelligent assistant that could truly help him.

After resting for three days and coding a few more logic circuits for the AIs, Huang Si felt his soul had recovered significantly.

Huang Si stood in the living room, closed his eyes, and instantly expanded his spiritual field.

The way ordinary people use their consciousness is through "concentration." No matter who they are, they subconsciously focus their attention to observe things.

But what Huang Si had learned from the "wind" energy was another way to use spiritual power: "diffusion."

Huang Si's spiritual field spread outward uniformly, as if blown by the wind. This made his spiritual field thinner, and his perception of things within the field became less sensitive, but the field did not dissipate; instead, it continued to expand.

Ten-meter radius... fifteen-meter radius... twenty meters...

After a few minutes, Huang Si's spiritual field had expanded to a radius of 26 meters, not only enveloping the entire house but even extending slightly into the darkness.

By this time, however, Huang Si was covered in sweat. Stretching his spiritual field to a 26-meter radius was already his limit.

Now, his consciousness could cover the whole house, but everything happening inside was blurry and indistinct.

After holding it for a while, Huang Si let the spiritual field contract. Only when he maintained it at a ten-meter radius did it feel like a comfortable distance.

Has my spirit strengthened slightly? Huang Si sensed.

He looked at the table in the living room, applied his spiritual power to it, and lifted the table with his consciousness.

The large wooden table defied the laws of physics, floating directly upward and hovering in the air.

"Hmm, I don't feel tired even after lifting something this heavy with my spiritual power. It seems I have indeed become stronger."

Subsequently, Huang Si performed a few more experiments.

Huang Si looked at a silicon wafer in front of him. His consciousness invisibly enveloped it, and in an instant, one thousand silicon particles suddenly split off from the wafer and flew to the side.

"One thousand. Success, but I cheated..." Huang Si muttered to himself.

Since he was the only one here, it didn't matter whether he cheated or not, but he had indeed cheated just now. Pulling small particles off the silicon wafer was a single action; Huang Si had locked onto 100 silicon structures with one strand of consciousness, so he only needed to split his focus ten ways to pull the particles off.

But this was already a very good achievement. It meant that in the future, whenever Huang Si encountered repetitive tasks that weren't too complex, he could multitask and complete hundreds or thousands of things at the same time.

After testing a few times, Huang Si felt a bit tired, but he also confirmed one thing: expanding his spiritual field was very beneficial for increasing his spiritual strength.

And spiritual strength is a reflection of soul strength.

What can you do when your soul strength becomes stronger? Forget it, as long as it's useful, that's enough. Huang Si couldn't be bothered to care; in any case, his Creation Power was sufficient for now.

Huang Si squatted in the room for four days crafting small robots, finally making up for the losses of the past few days.

In the early hours of the morning, the alarm clock rang.

"The time for the wind to blow again has arrived. Will it blow today?" Huang Si got dressed, got up, and took a chair to the front door.

Just as he expected, the wind began to rise.