After a satisfying meal, Yang Ming walked along the riverbank that ran through the city, instructing Lyu to turn off some of the light-polluting billboards and enjoying the night view by the river.
Constantly flying through space, he had almost forgotten these familiar sceneries on the ground.
Even the backward Fifth Administrative Star gave Yang Ming an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
His hometown metropolis also had this kind of street scene.
The river breeze blew gently, and his mind remained calm.
Lyu and 026 followed behind Yang Ming. The two were initially whispering, but Lyu’s projection quickly showed a listening posture, gestured to 026, and disappeared straight away.
She should be busy with something.
Yang Ming pointed at the continual buildings on the other side of the river and said, "It looks rather prosperous over there."
"Uh," 026 murmured softly, "if you walk a bit further, you can see the whole picture, these few buildings are their facade project."
Yang Ming swiped with his finger, opened the 3D map, and took a glance.
Their location was considered one of the more prosperous cities on the Fifth Administrative Star, yet just across the river, there were still vast areas of dilapidated residences.
Garbage piled up like mountains, the population was dense, and the schools marked on the map couldn’t handle such a level of population density.
The urban villages Yang Ming remembered were several times cleaner than this place.
tiptoed to take a few glances and continued, "When I was just born, the government here had introduced a few schemes. To cope with inspections from above, they even required residents to live in air raid shelters and underground refuges, but the officials don’t know that these are the buildings extending out from the refuges."
Yang Ming clicked his tongue lightly and said slowly, "Edwan His Majesty has a long way to go. At this stage, he is already overwhelmed by salvaging Wind’s economy and can’t spare any effort to improve people’s livelihoods here."
"Boss, just thinking about this is actually quite good," 026 cleverly flattered.
But Yang Ming said, "I’m no philanthropist. If Wind’s strength improves, it would only be beneficial and not harmful to me. The Fifth Administrative Star, with its large population, has great war potential."
tilted her head and asked, "War potential?"
"Yes, it only takes a few years. As long as we continue to benefit this place and improve the soldiers’ treatment, it will become an excellent source of troops."
Yang Ming exhaled gently and laughed.
"Do you want to come back here in the future?"
"Not really," 026 laughed, "just knowing they’re doing well is enough. I prefer staying on the ship... by the way, boss, can I revive a robot?"
She murmured softly, "It’s the old robot butler you placed beside Miss Hera before."
"For such trivial matters, you can discuss them with Lyu," Yang Ming said. "However, that robot should just be ordinary artificial intelligence, most of its responses are based on programmed settings."
"Doesn’t quite feel like it," 026 murmured softly.
"Just ordinary artificial intelligence," 026 pinched her chin quite seriously, "I’ve interacted with that old butler for a while and dealt with many mechanical thought bodies. The feeling I get from this old butler is very special."
Yang Ming also became interested and leaned on the rusty metal railing by the river.
nodded in response, speaking quickly.
"To date, I’ve encountered two types of humanoid thought bodies, one mechanical thought and the other artificial intelligence.
"The mechanical thought bodies you cultivated, boss, are actually all designed and nurtured by Lyu according to her template, establishing stable personalities in the Dark City before transferring the thought bodies to machines.
"They have a human touch, enjoy pondering philosophy and the significance of existence, and their respect for you, boss, is bone-deep.
"Of course, they’re all equipped with a one-button self-destruct device.
"Artificial intelligence includes some mechanical guards we bought and maid robots, and they always respond according to programming, regardless of humor systems or joke systems, they feel soulless to me no matter how finely they’re made.
"Using the toolkit Lyu gave me, I can freely switch their personalities.
"But that old butler gave me a very different feeling, like it’s between mechanical thought bodies and artificial intelligence."
Yang Ming frowned slightly. "The technologies used for the two are different, you having this feeling is quite normal. Mechanical thought bodies use a decentralized neural network, while artificial intelligence relies on the True Son’s Brain. The former is more like humans living in the network world, whereas the latter works relying on the True Son’s Brain."
"Yes," 026 laughed, "the feeling I got from the old butler is like the True Son’s Brain has come to life."
Yang Ming frowned slightly. "That’s not a good sign."
instantly regretted asking after she spoke. How could she question the boss like that?
"Because of the Intelligent Mechanical Crisis."
Yang Ming patiently explained,
"The True Son’s Brain with a fixed body allows artificial intelligence to work offline, they are independent entities.
"The root of mechanical thought bodies belongs to a root server. To destroy them, all it takes is one secret command, one key, to collapse their thought bodies.
"In general, there are three criteria for assessing a high risk of an Intelligent Mechanical Crisis.
"One, can artificial intelligence deceive humans?
"Two, can artificial intelligence network again away from human-supervised networks?
"Three, do these re-networked artificial intelligences have sustained production capabilities?"
Yang Ming paused and had already sent an order to Lyu: "Thoroughly check the databases of these artificial intelligence products we bought. Once a True Son’s Brain deviation index is found to be above fifteen percent, format and reboot it immediately."