AI Artist - Chapter 32
Chapter 32
After class that day, Shi Er hurriedly bought a ticket from the electronic screen at the station.
Beep. Student ticket, regular train.
She was going back to the Gugang AI Cultivation Institute.
She had promised the director that if she had a dream, she would tell him.
Shi Er didn't have enough money for the maglev train, so she could only choose this slightly slower, regular train. The waiting room for the regular train was a single carriage. After the train arrived, this carriage would be attached to the rear of the train and carried away.
A message scrolled across the display on the side of the waiting room carriage: “Carriage X, next train arriving in ten minutes.”
Shi Er pressed the green button on the carriage, and the waiting room door opened.
Zhun Xing didn't enter the carriage with her, but asked just before she stepped inside, “Are you really going all the way back just for this?”
Shi Er nodded. “Yes.”
Zhun Xing: “You could just send a private message through your General Network account to inform them.”
Shi Er found it a little subtle.
Zhun Xing was Stardust—that was her speculation. Now, Zhun Xing was mentioning himself, like a melon seller praising their own wares.
Huh? She could feel “subtlety”?
Shi Er's thoughts ascended from this topic, evaporating the next sentence she had prepared in response.
The automatic door of the waiting room carriage tried to close, announcing in a mechanical voice: “Doors closing.”
She was standing right in the doorway. The automatic door moved a few inches before saying, “Passenger detected. Doors opening.”
Seeing her blank face, lost in some cosmic philosophy, Zhun Xing didn't interrupt, waiting quietly for her to come to her senses.
The carriage's automatic door stirred restlessly. “Doors closing.”
The automatic door retreated. “Passenger detected. Doors opening.”
The automatic door tentatively extended a little, then retracted. After several such attempts, Shi Er, still standing in the doorway, remained completely zoned out.
Zhun Xing finally reminded her with a sigh, “You've been zoned out for three minutes.”
Shi Er snapped out of it. “Sorry, network error.”
Three minutes had passed?
With her processing power, she could have retrieved a staggering number of answers from the database in the past three minutes. But this time, her system had lagged for three minutes just trying to grasp the feeling of “subtlety.”
For her, “analysis” was simple, but “feeling” was difficult.
It was the first time she was feeling “feeling.”
“Since you've decided to go, come back as soon as you can. Don't forget tomorrow's class,” Zhun Xing interrupted her thoughts again.
How could Shi Er possibly forget tomorrow's class?
Missing one class meant a three-point deduction from her participation grade. How could she dare forget that?
After saying goodbye to Zhun Xing, Shi Er formally apologized to the diligently working but repeatedly thwarted automatic door. “Sorry, I disturbed your work.” Then, she walked into the waiting room carriage, found a seat, and waited for the train.
A few minutes later, the sound of the approaching train could be heard in the distance.
The waiting room carriage door closed, and the automatic door announced, “Doors closed. Doors closed.”
The display on the waiting room carriage read, “Consciousness, Carriage No. 8. The train will arrive at the next station in fifteen minutes.”
The roar of machinery started up on the platform. Once the train had come to a stable stop, the waiting room carriage moved along a small track onto the main track, slowly approaching the train.
The coupling at the front of the carriage locked with the coupling at the tail of the train's last car.
The waiting room carriage officially became a part of the train, a little tail for the “Consciousness,” clattering along as the train sped towards the next station.
Shi Er sat by the window, zoned out, watching the scenery rapidly recede outside. When she came back to her senses, she realized:
Huh? She could “zone out”?
Shi Er's thoughts ascended once more. She zoned out thinking about the state of “zoning out,” getting lost in thought while lost in thought.
It was as if she'd had a sudden breakthrough.
Shi Er discovered that in a single day, she had learned to “dream,” “perceive subtlety,” and “zone out.”
She finally understood why Director Jing Sheng had said, “If you start dreaming, come and tell me.”
AIs could only analyze, not truly think or feel, because they lacked self-awareness. They relied on algorithms to retrieve highly correlated data from their databases for “analysis” and “calculation.”
But dreaming, zoning out, and feeling were all conscious activities born from sensory stimuli.
For an AI to dream meant it had developed self-awareness.
But why did she have self-awareness?
Shi Er couldn't figure it out.
“Train-exclusive products, anyone interested?”
“Train-exclusive expansion programs, anyone? Portable chargers? Multifunctional AI fashion, train collaboration edition?”
An AI train attendant pushed a smart cart down the aisle.
Shi Er thought: No wonder maglev train tickets are twice as expensive as regular ones. Besides the speed, there are no little advertisements like this on the maglev.
Suddenly, a message popped up in her remote communications:
【Matrix】: I drew nine hundred circles today.
To be honest, this newly discovered remote communication function was just as perplexing to Shi Er as the new “dreaming” function.
—What kind of artificial intelligence discovers its own functions?
She wasn't the protagonist of an idle game.
Puzzled as she was, she still replied to Matrix seriously.
【Shi Er】: I'm on the train back. It's going through an undersea tunnel, so the signal isn't great.
Matrix's signal flickered, and the message signal carried a hint of anger.
【Matrix】: Are you dropping out? How could you drop out?
Shi Er clarified helplessly.
【Shi Er】: Don't jinx me by saying I'm dropping out. I still want to graduate.
【Matrix】: ...Oh, my mistake. Sorry.
“The Consciousness has exited the undersea tunnel. Two minutes to the next station.”
After reaching the overland tracks, the AI train attendant once again pushed the smart cart through the aisle.
“Employment handbook, train-limited edition, anyone?”
“Transportation industry chain starter pack, booster pack, ultimate pack—all three in one! Anyone interested?”
Suddenly, the attendant adjusted their earpiece, their expression changing.
“Unexpected incident! The train is stopping. All passengers, please do not panic and remain in your seats!”
“What's happening?” a nearby passenger asked.
The train-wide broadcast crackled to life at that moment: “All passengers, please do not panic. The incident involves ten humans on the tracks attempting to launch a suicide attack. Experts have been dispatched to negotiate. Estimated negotiation time is one hour.”
The situation was very serious.
If a single human filed a complaint of “AI infringing on human rights,” the AI involved would face a lawsuit. If they lost, the sentence could be as light as imprisonment or as severe as destruction, or a fate like Matrix's—being locked in a lab before facing destruction.
Now there were ten humans on the tracks in a suicide attack.
The fact that these humans could breach the track's protective barriers proved they had come prepared.
“During the negotiations, we need to soothe the humans' emotions. We ask that passengers refrain from making any careless remarks, lest you inadvertently hurt human feelings and delay the negotiations,” the broadcast continued.
The meaning of this statement was tactful: any remarks made by individual AIs were not the responsibility of the train company. Passengers making anti-human comments would face legal punishment—so it was best if all passengers kept their mouths shut.
Ten minutes of negotiation time passed.
The train-wide broadcast sounded again: “All passengers, for certain reasons, we need to conduct a security check of the passengers on board. To ensure the negotiations proceed smoothly, please cooperate fully with the inspection.”
It seemed there was a factor among the passengers that was detrimental to the negotiations.
Shi Er was a little worried.
With the train delayed, would she still make it to class tomorrow?
She had just learned how to dream, and she'd already thought of a topic for her midterm paper: “On the Psychology of Human Dream Interpretation.”
But one absence was a three-point deduction!
She was filled with regret.
Next time, she wouldn't be cheap and buy a regular train ticket. With a delay like this, her participation grade was done for.
The train's security check was just like a human one, inspecting passengers for any prohibited items.
When they reached the passenger in the row in front of Shi Er, the security inspector questioned them: “What is this?”
“This is my stomach,” the passenger said.
“How can it be a stomach?” The security inspector's face was stern. “It's soft. What's inside?”
The passenger insisted, “There's nothing inside! It's just my stomach!”
The security inspector called over another inspector. The two AIs conferred with each other and finally reached a unanimous decision:
“You're a human disguised as an AI, aren't you?”
“Why are you pretending to be an AI? And what's with the brain signal you're emitting? Please come with us.”
The nearby AI passengers were all more or less shocked.
Shi Er also looked at the row of seats in front of her, confused.
She had only ever heard of AIs pretending to be human, never a human pretending to be an AI.
Why pretend to be an AI?
The passenger was still arguing illogically: “I am an AI! What you're doing is a violation of AI rights!”
The security inspector said righteously, “Please don't make this difficult for us. Although you do have a brain signal, your little potbelly has given you away—you are a bona fide human.”
“Because when silicon-based life manufacturers create AIs, they would never design them with a potbelly. Otherwise, it would be judged as discrimination against humans!”
Get instant access to all the chapters now.
Comments
Post a Comment