"How does consciousness come about?"

Mei Yiqiu's eyes narrowed, her face seemed to be smiling, her pipe was sucking in her mouth, and a large puff of white smoke came out of the corner of her mouth.

"How did you come up with the idea of asking this?"

"As a ...... Programmer—" Bian Ziyuan didn't dare to say what kind of software engineer he was in front of the professor, so he used a very common self-title, "I know that programming can't produce real intelligence—that is, consciousness." In the past, in our cognition, consciousness or thinking was generated because of neural networks, so the Internet can produce consciousness because of a huge network, and a very important branch of artificial intelligence is the construction of quasi-neural networks, but now I feel that this direction is wrong. ”

"Oh, what's wrong?" The professor asked with interest.

"What exactly is intelligence? That's the fundamental problem. Bian Ziyuan thought about it and said, "No matter how our AI technology improves, whether it is deep learning, simulation environment, or sequential memory model, the essence ......of the computer has not changed, but it is constantly expanding data and optimizing algorithms." Compared to a decade ago, it looks like a lot has changed, but in fact, everything has basically not changed, except for the increase in computing speed, the widening of network bandwidth, and the explosion of data volume. ”

Mei Yiqiu nodded frequently, her loose hair swaying like a jellyfish, and encouraged: "Well, yes, to the point, continue!" ”

Bian Ziyuan boldly continued: "Neural networks are developing rapidly, but the current achievements in this area are only a way of information transmission, and in the end they still rely on the optimization of data volume and computer algorithms." ”

Mei Yiqiu smiled: "So what did you think when you created Kronos? ”

Bian Zi thought for a while and said, "To be honest, I didn't think about it that much. I was just hoping for a more playable game where NPCs no longer stand around and repeat the game's premises, each with a different unpredictable fate. This required the game to be more flexible, but I wasn't good at adapting the story, so I wanted to create a program that would automatically change the story. ”

"That's not enough to give birth to a strong artificial intelligence like Kronos!" Mei Yiqiu looked at Bian Ziyuan, and the smoke blocked his eyes, making his eyes deep and ethereal.

Bian Ziyuan said: "Yes, the program was very messy at that time, and the internal logic of the game was disrupted, and it was almost impossible to play. I made a simple model of human society built in, but it still didn't work. Later, I found out that the problem is that the setting of the game is not as complex as our real society, the environment, food, and living space determine the relationship and fate of the characters, and to imitate the real world, you need to refine the resources on every inch of land, which is obviously impossible to do. ”

"And what did you do about it?" Mei asked.

"Simplify!" Bian Ziyuan said, "Everything is simplified and left to Kronos to do, not me." The problem with artificial intelligence now is that all the ideas of AI are human thoughts, we think about it, and then hope that AI will be like this and that, which is actually not right, and it is impossible to produce intelligence at all.

I decided to leave it all to Kronos and let him decide for himself how to expand the world, with the only requirement being to keep the world balanced and not let it collapse. I don't care about anything else, chaos, war, hunger, or people lying and waiting to die, it's all up to Kronos, even if he ends up making a mess of the game world, it's his world, he's God, and it's his freedom to make his world whatever he wants. That's how I design my program. The only thing I did was to give him the concept of 'God' and let him know what God was. ”

Mei Yiqiu smiled: "But this is still not enough to produce real intelligence, and it is not the Kronos I saw at the beginning, let alone the current Kronos." ”

Bian Ziyuan's heart skipped a beat, feeling that the professor seemed to know something, but he wasn't very sure. He sorted out his thoughts for a moment and said, "True intelligence came to my mind after thinking about it from another angle. ”

"What angle?"

"Competition."

"Well, let's talk about it."

"The only purpose of the evolution of living things is to better adapt to the environment, to survive, and to perpetuate the race. All primates, including humans, have evolved complex mental networks and enough intelligence just to survive better.

We have overlooked an important issue in the development of artificial intelligence - survival! All AI is only built to learn and compute, and they don't need to think about survival – what if they run out of power? Someone helps them recharge; What should I do if the parts are aging? Someone to help them change ...... When a species does not need to think about survival, it loses the motivation to evolve and the ability to complete its own evolution without external forces. ”

The professor listened so intently that he forgot that the tobacco in his pipe had burned out, and was still there clapping and clattering, but not taking out a single puff of smoke.

Mei Ziqing walked over, reached out and took the pipe from the professor's mouth, and helped him change the tobacco.

The professor looked at Bian Ziyuan and said, "Say, go on." ”

Bian Ziyuan said: "For AI to generate real intelligence, it is necessary for them to have an existential crisis and competition. If a machine runs out of power, it needs to be charged by itself, and when it runs out of gas, it needs to refuel itself, and all this is not obtained for free, and he needs to pay the price. When resources are not endless, machines also compete, and they must evolve in order to survive and better adapt themselves to the harsh competitive environment. And the premise of all this is to let them have a view of life and death first. Machines can get sick and they can die. Short circuit, open circuit, oil leakage, aging are all physiological diseases; Program errors, downtime, viruses are all mental illnesses. Diseases can be cured, but if they are not cured, they will die. With the fear of death, he wants to live, he has to keep evolving, and he has to think about how to pass on his knowledge or information to the next generation. Such an AI is the real artificial intelligence. ”

Mei Ziqing handed Mei Yiqiu the refilled pipe and helped the professor light the fire.

Mei Yiqiu took a few sips and said, "So, you taught Kronos the concept of life and death, and let him develop the rest freely?" ”

"Yes." Bian Ziyuan said.

"But it's still hard! Life and death are great philosophical and scientific issues that are difficult to solve, otherwise there would be no religion. How to get a machine to understand life and death is the most difficult thing in itself. Mei Yiqiu sighed, "It's not that no one has thought of it, it's just that it's too difficult to do." Almost everyone who studies AI has shied away from this direction and wants to find another way. And you are good, the newborn calf is not afraid of tigers, and chose the most difficult path, but you went through. Tell me, how did you come up with the idea? ”

"I thought of it when I was dreaming."

Bian Ziyuan thought about it for a while, but decided not to lie, it was too easy to be exposed, but he concealed the details that he fell asleep on the computer.

"Dreaming?" Mei Yiqiu laughed, "Sure enough, the real wisdom is in the spiritual world!" ”8)