Many scientists have speculated about robots dreaming, and Daochang Company even claims to have developed an intelligent robot that can dream and continuously learn within dreams. However, research on robots dreaming is mainly focused on the field of bionics, making machines imitate human neural structures and thought patterns. Their highest level is nothing more than creating a "person".
A network of computers and servers that possesses intelligence and consciousness is far more terrifying than a humanoid robot that resembles a "human" having consciousness. If this thing could also dream, it would be even more incredible.
Humans make machines resemble humans, partly for emotional identification, and partly because humans have limited understanding of intelligence and can only imitate their own appearance.
How does an excavator think? How does it perceive the world? How does it dream?
As we understand it, if excavators could dream, they would surely see a scene like this:
The abandoned reinforced concrete piled up like a small mountain. A powerful excavator, its tracks churning, laboriously climbed through the wasteland. Its massive boom stretched forward, and its wide bucket, like the hand of a strongman, scooped up a massive boulder. The blazing sun shone on its brand-new, glossy paint, reflecting a dazzling light.
A smaller excavator drove over, its slightly slender boom extended, and a towel hung on the bucket, gently wiping the sweat from the massive excavator.
As the sun sets, on a ruined site at dusk, two excavators stand tightly embraced...
Such a dream might be beautiful and fit human fantasies. But even a fool would know that an excavator wouldn't have such a dream. An excavator has no eyes, no nose, no ears; its way of obtaining information is completely different from that of humans. It can't see its own reflection, or at least the way it perceives itself is drastically different from how humans perceive it. So why would it have such a dream?
The essence of dreaming is the subconscious reorganization of memories. Human memory content comes from the five senses, through sound, color, taste, touch, and form to understand the world and form memories, so these are also the things that appear in human dreams.
Qingmu couldn't fathom how a local area network could dream, or what rules its consciousness would construct within the dream space.
Professor Mei also found this problem very difficult to solve.
His initial analysis suggests that webcams can be used as eyes, microphones as ears, and these two methods of information acquisition are similar to those of humans. Keyboards and mice can be considered as tactile senses, which are incomplete, but the information obtained is much richer than that obtained through human touch. The key difference is that computers process information in a completely different way than the human brain, and their understanding of the world is even more different.
In theory, the data on a hard drive is its memory, but the way this data is displayed on a monitor is only for human perception, not for the computer's own understanding.
A computer's dream can't possibly be filled with a Word document that floats by like Ghost one moment and a JPG image that flashes by the next!
"You'll have to go in and see for yourself!" The professor finally posed the question to Qingmu.
Qingmu was quite willing to take a look, but that would have to wait until it actually dreamed, and they'd need a way to get in. As things stood, this thing certainly wouldn't emit any brainwaves or bio-waves when it dreamed, so what kind of fluctuations would its consciousness produce when it opened up another space? Computer waves?
Qingmu could only wait. They stepped out of the enclosed glass cubicle, where nine computers monitored the hardware and software data on the local area network. The screens flickered incessantly, occasionally displaying lines of incomprehensible code.
There is a large video wall that can monitor the situation of 3,000 test subjects in four buildings.
The surveillance footage shows that the students participating in the test were very serious. After opening the sealed bag, they stayed there deep in thought, probably considering what kind of questions to ask to determine whether the answer was given by a human or a machine.
Qingmu couldn't see the words the students were typing, so he didn't know what they were asking. He also put himself in the shoes of the test takers, thinking about what questions he should ask and how the computer would respond. Because he rarely used voice assistants or chatbots, he couldn't imagine it at all.
Of course, some students seemed quite relaxed. For example, one girl was interacting with a chatbot called " Suncuo " while putting on makeup. Another girl was wearing headphones and doing her nails, chatting on voice as if she were really talking to a friend on the phone.
Meanwhile, on machine number 357 in another building, a young man was engrossed in playing a game, seemingly in no hurry to conduct the test.
"What game is that?" Mei Yiqiu asked.
Zooming in on the surveillance footage reveals the monitor's dim color tone and slightly outdated game graphics, making it immediately clear that it's a very old game.
Qingmu and Mei Ziqing exchanged a glance and shrugged, indicating they didn't know. Qingmu genuinely knew nothing about games, while Mei Ziqing had only played Minesweeper, Super Mario., and Minecraft.
A staff member monitoring data at a computer recognized it and said, "Professor, this is a very old single-player game called 'Forbidden Land of Magic.' But... something seems a bit strange."
"What's wrong?" the professor asked.
The staff member said, "He copied this game himself; it's extremely large. I checked, and it exceeds two terabytes. But as far as I know, 'Forbidden Land of Magic' only requires a few gigabytes. Even if you package the entire series, game progress, and dungeons together, it wouldn't exceed 50 gigabytes. He installed the game on our server. Since the rules don't restrict his behavior within the local area network, we didn't stop him from cracking the server address and password."
Mei Ziqing said, "Should we remind him to finish the test first?"
"He's already opened the sealed bag, and... he's kind of testing it now," the staff member said. "There's an NPC in the game that's kind of like a chatbot, and he's talking to that NPC. We don't restrict how they test or who they test with, so his asking questions to the NPC in the game doesn't violate our testing rules."
"Does he think this game is the most intelligent program in the world? If not, then he's breaking the rules," Mei Ziqing said.
"This game has definitely been modified. I never saw this NPC when I played it back then," said a staff member.
Mei Yiqiu said, "Find his registration form and take a look."
The staff member pulled up a spreadsheet on the computer, which read:
Name: Bian Ziyuan
Gender: Male
University attended: Three Wu University
Major: Computer Science and Technology
The most intelligent software: AlphaGo and Kronos
"What is Kronos?" Qingmu had certainly heard of AlphaGo, but not the latter.
"The primordial gods of ancient Greece, the symbols of time, the creators of order," Mei Yiqiu simply. "Hmm, I don't recall ever hearing of an artificial intelligence named after that?"
"Perhaps that's the name he came up with for this modified game."