If there was a phenomenon that remained a mystery to people, someone would always study it.
If a technology was extremely effective but people didn't understand how it worked, someone would surely keep studying it for all kinds of reasons.
During the Internet era, people used AI to assist with many kinds of work. It had proven quite useful for production, research, and even combat, making it the go-to choice for cutting costs and boosting efficiency.
Unfortunately, the virus released by Bartmoss, the God of Hackers, had pushed all those AIs across the line into becoming Dangerous Critical Entities. The vast majority of AIs had become extremely aggressive.
A single person had nearly crippled all of human society. In their helplessness, people also wondered:
Could such power be put to use for themselves?
Was it still possible for humanity to use highly intelligent AI in the New Net?
Bryce's answer was simple and blunt. He hadn't revealed the specific reasons Network Watch studied these things, but he had answered Lier's question.
"There are many reasons to study this, but you only need to know that the process itself is valuable."
Bryce ended the topic of Delamain with that one sentence, while Lier thought in silence.
For the average person, this answer revealed a lot: after the Old Net collapsed, almost all the major corporations publicly kept their distance from high-performance AI and allowed Network Watch to manage it.
But in secret, anyone with half a brain could guess that if this was a valuable project, any company with capital would definitely be studying it.
Lier could think of even more possibilities.
But he could only ask about things that weren't too sensitive.
"What does this have to do with Muramasa, this AI?"
"First, Network Watch has recognized your status as