Humans have studied consciousness for over a decade without understanding its fundamental nature. It is clearly just a combination of proteins and other organic matter, yet it can give birth to "me". Apart from cloning, humans have been able to create a brain in a laboratory, which has life activities but no consciousness.
Academician Xiao even spent over a hundred years creating a "person" by controlling individual molecules. Once activated, this "person" has a heartbeat, blood flow, can absorb nutrients, and has metabolism. Whether viewed from a macroscopic or microscopic perspective, it is a complete human being, except that it has no consciousness.
From the perspective of dialectical materialism, consciousness is merely a combination of bioelectrical and chemical signals from a set of cells. This is very clear under the current technological conditions of the fleet. Biologists can control the body by controlling a single set of signals, and can also copy this set of signals to another body.
The brain of the created "human" was also copied with various bioelectric and chemical signals. When stimulated with a needle, it could feel pain, but it did not know how to control its body to avoid it, nor did it show any conditioned reflexes. All of this can only mean that it is not a real human being, not even as good as a person in a vegetative state.
Consciousness is perhaps the most mysterious question in the universe. Yet, it is not a special phenomenon. In the Milky Way alone, billions of civilizations have been born throughout history, each with hundreds of millions to trillions of consciousness entities. The number of consciousness entities far exceeds the number of stars in the Milky Way. It is right beside us, right before our eyes, yet humanity does not know its origin. No matter how much humanity studies it, it cannot create a consciousness entity. This is the greatest mystery.
Academician Xiao believes that not only humans cannot create consciousness, but even Great Star Region Civilization may not be able to do so. If consciousness could be mass-produced, civilizations might be even more terrifying than the Insect Race. Centuries ago, humanity worried that the development of computers would lead to self-awareness, and some extremists even demanded the destruction of computers and a return to the agricultural era. Centuries later, the computing speed of any individual's personal computer terminal in the fleet now surpasses that of supercomputers from centuries ago, such as Summit, Sierra, Sunway TaihuLight. If it's the fleet's supercomputer, its computing speed is even more outrageous. It can completely simulate the operation of a star. This simulation is not a rough model, but one that is detailed down to the activity of every elementary particle. As long as the data of a star is input into the computer, it can pinpoint the temperature of a certain part of the star to 0.01 degrees Celsius the next hour. If the Earth of that time were input into this computer, it could know all the weather, frost, rain, and geological changes in advance.
Despite its immense power, it possesses autonomy, but this is not consciousness. It simply faithfully executes human commands; it is merely a smarter machine. Without consciousness, it will never rebel.
According to Academician Xiao's speculation, consciousness may involve the highest rules of the universe. Consciousness can only be born naturally and cannot originate from man-made objects. If this is true, the consciousness in the universe may not be limited to living beings. It could be a planet, or a cloud of gas. It may be as small as a speck of dust or as large as a roc. When we become powerful in the future, we must travel to the Milky Way or the universe to search for the secrets of consciousness.
Humans cannot endow machines with consciousness, but this does not affect the manufacture of the robot army. These robots will be divided into various types for different purposes. Some robots that perform simple tasks will be directly controlled by the major computers in the fleet, while some complex and irregular tasks will be directly controlled by humans through a holographic control system. This is equivalent to putting a suit of mechanical armor on a person, which is not only powerful, efficient, and adaptable, but also able to adjust its working state according to various environments and changes.
This system will eventually completely replace direct human participation. In the best-case scenario, humans would hide in a galaxy within the Milky Way, while their bases would be tens of thousands of light-years away. Even if other civilizations attacked these bases, they would only destroy a pile of steel, and humans could quickly rebuild them elsewhere using highly efficient robots.
Moreover, humans can now work on multiple planets and star systems simultaneously, eliminating the need to travel to these locations in person aboard the Deep Blue. Humans will then only need to produce an endless army of robots to quickly build massive fleets. The primary task now will no longer be the production of warships, but rather the increase in population.
More than 400 years have passed since the fleet's arrival in 2185, and the population has only increased from 500 million to over 800 million. Given that human lifespan will not cause a population decrease in the short term, this growth rate is indeed very slow. In fact, the Deep Blue is large enough to accommodate tens of billions of people, but people are unwilling to let their offspring grow up in the fleet. Everyone has been waiting until Hu Yu can lead the fleet to settle down on a planet.
Hu Yu understood everyone's thoughts. It was a traditional Zhonghua idea for thousands of years, prioritizing the well-being of future generations. Therefore, Hu Yu had no requirements regarding childbirth, leaving it entirely to the people's own choice. However, the situation had changed. Planet Three would soon be habitable, and the fleet would stay there for several hundred years. If possible, the fleet would even take Planet Three with them. People would no longer need to live in the Deep Blue, and the population would definitely experience explosive growth.
With a sufficient population, more robots can be controlled to work. Robots controlled holographically will account for one-tenth of the total number of robots, and the total number of robots will never be exhausted. The more robots there are, the faster the fleet can be built, and the fleet can surpass the Wind Star Civilization in a short time.
The Wind Star Civilization has over 300 billion inhabitants, more than 300 million warships, and over 100 billion space-based artillery batteries and interstellar mines. If humanity wants to defeat this massive force, it would need to build at least 30 billion Stealth Killer. Even Hu Yu finds this number daunting. However, humanity's research into warfare is probably rare in the entire Milky Way. Absolutely no human leader would ever build a massive fleet to launch a direct assault on Wind Star's territory.
Hu Yu wouldn't actually build a fleet of 30 billion warships to attack the Wind Star Civilization; otherwise, he wouldn't have wasted so much effort penetrating deep into Wind Star's Wind Star Civilization and pretending to transport civilization creatures to feed the Insect Race. All of Hu Yu's actions were aimed at defeating the Wind Star Civilization with minimal military force.
Feng Jun, one of the operators of the Wind Star Shipyard, was secretly replaced by Hu Yu when he returned to Wind Star for the second time. Now, Feng Jun is controlled by an old businessman in the fleet. This old businessman is a businessman from the Earth era. He Feng Jun have the same style of doing things. They are both bloodsucking and unscrupulous merchants. After joining the fleet, the old businessman became useless. Now, his talents can be fully displayed again.