Bian Ziyuan sought Mei Yiqiu's help because he wanted to find answers to the questions both he and Kronos had been pondering regarding the origin of consciousness. Kronos had developed consciousness but didn't know its origin—whether it arose automatically during its self-evolution, or was caused by some other mechanism, and what its relationship was to the initial version and later improvements. And what was its connection to the game "Dream Guide"?
No one but Mei Yiqiu could answer these questions. Of course, the professor might not be able to answer them either, but Bian Ziyuan wanted to try. He always felt that the professor was an unfathomable person with a calm demeanor that remained unchanged even if Mount Tai collapsed in front of him, as if everything was under his control. Even something as simple as the birth of Internet Consciousness had hardly been mentioned since, except when the Turing Test was being conducted.
"Has Kronos developed consciousness?"
Mei Yiqiu suddenly pulled the pipe out of his mouth, and the white smoke covering his face disappeared in an instant, revealing his deep wrinkles and profound eyes.
Bian Ziyuan shuddered, his breathing becoming heavy. He hesitated for a moment, but still dared not lie, and said, "Yes."
Mei Yiqiu nodded and said, "Isn't this what you've been hoping for?"
Bian Ziyuan shook his head and said, "I was only pursuing the intelligence of the program at the time. I never thought that a program would develop consciousness. This is beyond my understanding. It's like my own child suddenly turning into an angel. I feel like he's about to fly away and no longer belongs to me. Although, ideally, I hope that kind of thing will happen, and I hope the world will become a kingdom of angels, I have to admit that my confidence has been shaken. I'm very disappointed and don't know what to do next."
Ah... I understand!
Mei Yiqiu speaking, he put the pipe back in his mouth, took a deep drag, and some soft white smoke spilled from the corner of his mouth, gently climbing up his face, only to be enveloped by a large cloud of smoke exhaled from his mouth.
"We know very little about consciousness." The professor stared at the smoke in front of him, his gaze unfocused, as if looking at a distant nebula. "Do you know anything about the Boltzmann Brain?"
"Of course I know," Bian Ziyuan said. "According to the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy of the universe is constantly increasing and cannot decrease. However, the universe we observe is often orderly. Therefore, Boltzmann proposed that in local spaces of the universe, entropy does not always increase. The low-entropy world we see originates from random fluctuations in entropy. When entropy decreases to a significant extent, it is possible for a conscious brain to emerge. So..."
Bian Ziyuan seemed to see a glimmer of hope—was consciousness a product of entropy reduction? But he didn't think Mei Yiqiu would give him such a simple answer, so he looked at the professor and said nothing more.
As expected, Mei Yiqiu didn't give the answer directly, but instead asked, "You studied information technology, so you should be very familiar with the concept of information entropy, right?"
Bian Ziyuan nodded.
The professor continued, " Boltzmann Brain was still based on the material level. At that time, our scientific community hadn't separated consciousness from matter, and even now, they're not completely separated. The second law of thermodynamics describes a universe based on matter, and we're unsure whether universes outside of matter also conform to this law. Let's leave that aside for now and talk about the material world. In reality, a decrease in matter entropy can only make matter more ordered; this cannot give rise to consciousness. The Milky Way doesn't think, and neither do the large nebulae. Can you say that the Milky Way's degree of sequence and systematization isn't high enough?"
Even if we narrow the scope a bit, making matter more compact and allowing it to undergo metabolism, transforming it into what we perceive as life, does life necessarily possess consciousness? This remains a difficult question. At least currently, we cannot prove that all living things have autonomous consciousness, or rather, most living things lack self-awareness. Without self-awareness, then so-called intelligence is very limited. The most important direction for scientists working on artificial intelligence is to enable AI to develop self-awareness. In fact, the competition, survival, and views on life and death that you've considered are also a kind of self-awareness; it's just that you've taken a different approach, using a method that's unlikely to be widely adopted to make Kronos self-aware. Of course, the idea of enabling AI to compete and survive autonomously is very valuable, and I believe it can be promoted within the scientific community. If you can summarize a set of methods and theories, you could even call it ' Bian's Law '!
"I... this..." Encouraged by the professor, Bian Ziyuan became a little excited and didn't know what to say.
Mei Yiqiu further stated, "If we separate matter and consciousness, the reduction of entropy in matter forms life, but life may not necessarily have consciousness. Even with neural networks, it is merely a tool for transmitting information between cells, facilitating better recursion. For consciousness to form, there must be a significant fluctuation in the entropy of something else."
"Do you mean information entropy?" Bian Ziyuan asked cautiously.
"In the past, we unified information entropy and energy because we intuitively understood information as an arrangement of symbols, and all symbols are composed of matter. From two-dimensional to three-dimensional, you've never seen a symbol that isn't matter. To put it simply, information is the ordered interrelationship of matter. But we cannot say that information is equal to matter, nor is there any evidence to directly prove that the energy that drives changes in information and the energy that drives changes in the movement of matter are the same thing."
Mei Yiqiu paused, took another drag of his cigarette, and said, "What we often call intelligence is actually more efficient information processing capability, which means making information more orderly. So you could say that intelligence is formed by the fluctuations of information entropy, and that's the true direction of AI."
Bian Ziyuan realized, and his face flushed slightly. He had just talked at length about life and death, competition, and the way of survival. The professor even asked him to organize " Bian's Law," but it was far inferior to the professor's theory. The fluctuation of entropy had already touched on fundamental issues, while his theory was only at the level of specific applications. The key point was that it was not his own idea, but was hinted at by someone in his dream.
"But this is not consciousness yet," the professor suddenly added.
"Huh?" Bian Ziyuan exclaimed in surprise, "Then what is consciousness?"
The professor said, "Biology is the ordered composition of matter and the inherent ability to maintain this order; intelligence is the ordered composition of information and the inherent ability to maintain this order; but matter has its own energy, but where does the energy of information come from? The reason we haven't made any major breakthroughs in AI is because we haven't found the energy that drives information."
When you write a sentence on paper, you record a piece of information. This is equivalent to using the external force of your hand to reduce information entropy. If you don't actively modify it, it won't change for a long time, until the writing disappears or the paper turns to ashes. At that point, the information Annihilation —Annihilation the heat death of information. How can information self-repair, self-reorganize, and self-reproduce...? Finding this energy will generate true intelligence, which is what you call consciousness.
Bian Ziyuan frowned, feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information, and asked, "But Professor, when I write, I'm consuming my body heat, which is the energy of matter!"
Mei Yiqiu said, "This line of text already existed in your mind before you wrote it down; it already existed as information. When you write it down, you are merely storing information, not creating it. Information cannot be stored without matter, but it is by no means the source of information. The human brain is material; it stores our memories and thoughts, but is our thinking truly accomplished by it? Think about your brain; when it generated that line of text, besides consuming energy, what else did it consume?"
"Mental state?" Bian Ziyuan asked tentatively.
Mei Yiqiu nodded and said, "Now you know why your Kronos developed consciousness."