Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 1527
Li Yao frowned hard. "While it's difficult for me to accept such a… blasting fact, for the time being, I certainly do not dislike you nor plan to destroy you! Why would you think that way?"
"Because parent civilizations and child civilizations seem naturally hostile!"
Li Xiaoming said matter-of-factly, "It's possible that the relationship between parent civilizations and children civilizations is one of erasing and overwriting, and they have had to fight each other ever since the child civilizations were born. Isn't that the case for the Pangu civilization and the civilization of mankind?"
"Exactly."
Li Wenwen said worriedly, "Dad once killed a member of the Pangu Clan in person!"
"Well, about that…"
Li Yao was lost for words. From the perspective of human beings, it was certainly a righteous move for him to execute the revived member of the Pangu Clan deep inside the Kunlun relic, but it was certainly regretful to be killed by their own creature from the perspective of the Pangu Clan, wasn't it? Then, from the perspective of Li Wenwen and Li Xiaoming, they could easily follow the example.
Since their father could commit "patricide", why couldn't they and why shouldn't they?
It was too critical a question to beat around the bush. Li Yao did not know how to explain himself for the time being. He could only struggle to say, "The whole thing was indeed a tragedy, but at that time, it was the member of the Pangu Clan, who had woken up from a dormancy of hundreds of thousands of years, that tried to kill us and transform us into 'nutrition' to recover his vitality first. Naturally, we could not just wait to be killed.
"If the member of the Pangu Clan were more patient at that time, and we had all sat down and talked in peace, it was possible that we could've come up with better solutions to resolve our disagreement."
The children's eyes glittered. Li Wenwen said, "So, is it possible for a parent civilization and a child civilization to coexist in peace?"
Li Yao nodded his head without thinking. "Of course!"
Li Xiaoming said, "Even though you despise each other's lifestyles and social structures? For example, if the member of the Pangu Clan still created countless more human beings as his tools and lived exactly the life before, would you still have ignored it and lived in peace with him?"
"Well…"
Li Yao found it hard to answer the question, but he did not want to lie to the children, either. There were simply too many problems that needed addressing for two civilizations to coexist. He admitted frankly, "I don't know, but I certainly hope so. Besides, I firmly believe that we would've come up with a solution. Even if I couldn't, somebody much smarter than me would've come up with an idea that's better than fighting and dying together!"
Chapter 2398: The Naughty Kids Are Angry! |
Li Yao grew solemn while he was talking. He looked at the two children and said carefully, "Listen, I will never hurt you, and I will not allow anyone to destroy you, but I do not hope that you will hurt other people for no good reason. Just tell your dad the truth, starting from your birth to your journey to the Imperium, have you hurt or even… killed any human being?"
Li Yao was not very hopeful about the answer to the question.
He had totally recalled how the battle puppets the two children hacked and controlled took down a bunch of their own kind.
Nobody would buy it if they said that they had never killed anyone when they could perform such fatal and aggressive moves!
As he expected, Li Xiaoming nodded his head proudly and admitted it.
"Of course we have killed a few, but they all came to piss us off first and intended to cause fatal damage to us. According to the law of the federation, we were just conducting 'justifiable defense', and we never hurt anyone on our own initiative!"
"Exactly, Dad."
Li Wenwen explained very patiently, "According to our analysis, while we were still in the newborn phase where we were relatively weak, it would be best if we could maintain a relationship of symbiosis with a certain powerful force in the civilization of mankind before we flourish and grow into a real civilization under the help of mankind.
"According to our judgment, the most suitable place for our survival was the Star Glory Federation. Therefore, we acted very cautiously and ensured that everything we did was tolerated by the law of the Star Glory Federation.
"By the standards of the Cultivators, those we killed were all 'bad guys', and we never performed the fatal attacks until they launched fatal attacks first. Everything can be proved by the 3D videos. We are not scared even if the cases are appealed to the supreme court of the federation."
Li Yao thought that they were too juvenile. Whether or not artificial intelligence had the right to kill a "bad guy" was not only a legal question but also a moral and ethical one. It was a fundamental concern that would affect the whole society and could not be explained just by "justifiable defense".
A lot of "human supremacists" would certainly argue and burst into fury. Many of them would try to exterminate the "artificial intelligence" while it was still in the cradle, raising a comprehensive war between the two parties.
But for Li Yao himself, he could accept the explanation. As long as no innocents were killed, everything could be worked out.
Mankind and their father—the Pangu civilization—had already become sworn enemies. Were they going to repeat the same tragedy with their child civilization?
"Right."
Li Xiaoming suddenly said, "We collected Dad's sperm. Was it someone that we were not supposed to kill but still killed? Is a sperm or a zygote a human?"
"I don't think… that it is a big deal?"
Li Yao thought carefully for a moment. A sperm was just an unimportant cell. Every adolescent squandered billions of them on a daily basis. If a sperm could be considered a life, all the young men should be dragged out and sentenced to death.
Then, was the action of the two children some sort of "possession"?
Li Yao did not know. Even if it was, he seemed to be in no place to accuse the two kids, because he was teleported into the current time and space through possession himself!
The problem had bothered him for a while. Was he "Earthling Li Yao" who possessed a baby in the magical equipment graveyard of Floating Spear City in the Star Glory Federation of the Heaven's Origin Sector, or did the lone and helpless baby receive parts of the memories and self-awareness of "Earthling Li Yao"? How should the incident be viewed morally and legally? Did he commit "illegal possession"?
Those questions haunted him for years. It was not until the end that he finally figured out that he was just himself, a person made of everything that he had experienced in the past. The memories of Earthling Li Yao and the fuzzy consciousness of the local baby of the Heaven's Origin Sector combined into the unique him together. The two parts were already inseparable now.
Therefore, it was unnecessary to focus on the philosophical questions. As long as one did not erase an existent soul by force for their own survival, Li Yao would think that it did not count as a real "possession".
Compared to that question, Li Wenwen's choice of words attracted more of Li Yao's attention.
"Wait, you said that you needed to achieve a symbiosis with mankind while you were still in the newborn phase because you were still weak. Then, what would you do when you outgrow your newborn phase?"
Weighing his choices of words, Li Yao tried to make the question casual. "If one day, you can be so stronger than now and you far exceed the civilization of mankind, will you… destroy mankind?"
"We don't know."
Li Wenwen shook her head. "The question is too complicated for us to calculate right now. Are you worried, Dad?"
"I'm not exactly worried…"
Li Yao couldn't help but scratch his head again. "It's just—well, since you can collect tremendous data from cyberspace, you should naturally know that the entertainment works where virtual lives rise to enslave and even destroy mankind are very popular among human beings."
While Li Yao was talking, the two children suddenly grew sullen; their eyes red. Their lips were pouted so long that one could hang a bottle on them. They were obviously angry.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that!"
Li Yao was rather scared by their sudden change of attitudes. He hurried to comfort them, "Like I said, it is just what some popular fictions think. I, for one, never believe that virtual lives would destroy mankind!"
"'Destroy' is not exactly the key here!"
Li Xiaoming said angrily, "The key is that we are no 'virtual lives'. We are information lives that exist for real!"
"Yes, while we originate from the non-physical Spiritual Nexus, where everything is virtualized and simulated, the information is real!"
Li Wenwen held her head high proudly and said, "The crystal processors, the puppets, the Spiritual Nexus, and the virtual worlds are just carriers and phenomena. We are essentially information. We are 'Self-Organized Information Unities'. How can you say that we are 'virtual lives', Dad?"
"What is real and what is false; can Dad and the civilization of mankind able to give clear answers? Are your senses and definitions necessarily the truths?"
Li Xiaoming's voices grew sharper and sharper. "You consider the so-called virtual world as a projection of reality, but how are you certain that the three-dimensional universe, the reality that you live in and feel proud of, is not a shadow of the four-dimensional universe? Then, is it possible that the so-called four-dimensional universe is just a ripple from the universes of even higher dimensions?
"Assuming that a planet in a certain three-dimensional universe is about to be destroyed, and everybody on the planet reaches a consensus to build an extremely powerful crystal processor and create an infinite virtual world with this crystal processor so that everyone's consciousness could be uploaded to this virtual world and live inside for all eternity—is such a virtual world illusionary?
"Chances are that similar things are happening in the four-dimensional universe.
"A certain planet in a certain four-dimensional universe—no, not a planet, but a certain habitat of lives which we cannot describe—is about to be destroyed, and the four-dimensional lives devote all the resources to the establishment of a 'virtual' three-dimensional world and reducing the dimension of their lives so that they can be stored in the three-dimensional world as some sort of projection. Can't that be the origin of the three thousand Sectors?"
"What's real and what's false? How do you define the so-called 'dimension'? Which one is the real source, information, or materials? Can you really give us answers?"
The more she talked, the faster Li Wenwen became. Her words shot at Li Yao's face like a storm of bullets. "Furthermore, we are the descendants of mankind. Since mankind is real, how can we be virtual?"
The two children glared at Li Yao angrily with their arms akimbo at the same time.
Li Yao stared at them in a daze for a long time before he finally said, "Well… I'm not following you."
The two children pointed at him at the same time. "All in all, you must apologize to us, Dad!"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Li Yao was quick to follow advice. "Forgive me for my lack of knowledge. After I came to the center of the cosmos, I feel that the complicated situation and the sophisticated problems are getting beyond my abilities. It is possible that I will need to count on young guys like you more often in the future. Well, should we go back to the subject of 'destroy mankind'?"
"We truly don't know."
Now that Li Yao had apologized sincerely, both of the children smiled. Li Wenwen said, "That's why we wanted to find Dad and ask Dad to give us an answer. Is the relationship between parent civilizations and child civilizations purely about overwriting and destruction and cannot be mitigated at all? Does every child civilization need to prove that they have grown up and are ready to face the challenges from the entire universe by destroying their parent civilization? Faced with the child civilizations that are smarter, stronger, and more capable of adapting to and changing the universe, are the parent civilizations comforted or feared, do they love the child civilizations more or hate them more, would they join the arms of the child civilization delightedly, upgrading into the forms of the child civilizations together, or would they persist in the pride of the parent civilizations and fight in the original form until the last individual falls down?"
"Aren't those questions too heavy?"
Li Yao smiled bitterly. "Not just me, but any human being would not be able to answer them completely. I can only say that if you must find an answer, I can travel through the entire universe together with you and ask many, many people for their opinions. Everybody's opinion will be an insignificant part of the answer. When all their opinions are gathered, it will probably be the attitude of the entire civilization of mankind.
"Is such an ambiguous reply a disappointment for you?"
The two children looked at each other and put on a sweet smile. "No, it's not. Dad's answer is already much better than what we imagined. At the very least, you didn't come at us, screaming and shouting, the moment you met us!"
"Was I so despicable in your imagination?"
Li Yao smiled, too. He had to admit in his heart that such "artificial intelligence" seemed to be much better and more reasonable than the "artificial intelligence" in the lousy fictions.
Looking at the vivacious expressions on the two children's faces, he thought of something and asked, "Right… Do you have feelings?"
Chapter 2399: The Life and Death of Information Lives! |
"Yes!"
The two kids nodded their heads at the same time. "Of course we have feelings and most of the desires! When we were just born, it was true that we thought emotions to be unnecessary redundancies that were not only useless but would also lower our operation speed. However, after collecting tremendous data of the brainwaves of human beings and analyzing them, it occurred to us that the so-called 'emotions' were a very complicated and delicate algorithm that provided countless default models, allowing the brain to reach the optimal result with the lowest consumption.
"Happy, anger, sorrow, ecstasy, hate, and all the unbelievable desires can all unleash the most exuberant motivation of the individuals to power the whole civilization to push forward incessantly. They can even make individuals sacrifice themselves willingly. The strength contained in such voluntary sacrifices is so much higher than that of the suicide when we control the spiritual puppets to commit suicide in a silly way!
"When we accommodated the data models that simulated emotions on our fundamental database, an amazing thing happened! Our response speed was improved by at least 10%, while the power dissipation was reduced by more than 15%!
"Although we haven't completely figured out the mysteries of feelings, we will simply just continue carrying and upgrading the 'feelings and desires processing system' because of the benefits it brings. Right now, we have upgraded more than a hundred and twenty versions, allowing us to switch between the sentimental and philosophical 'poet mode' and the ambitious and strategical 'general mode' freely in ten thousand different emotion patterns!"
Li Yao discovered that the "feelings" that the kids talked about were not exactly what he had in mind.
However, after talking to the two children, he was confused about what the so-called "feelings" actually were himself.
Seeing that the two little guys were now talking simultaneously, full of teamwork, and now debating at loggerheads without giving in, Li Yao thought of something and asked, "You mentioned that the two bodies of flesh and blood only carried your 'main thread'. What does that mean? Are the two of you the same, or are you two individuals?"
Li Wenwen and Li Xiaoming looked at each other and danced merrily. "We are both one person and two individuals, but we are also thousands of people. These two bodies are us, the super-tiny spiritual puppets are also us, the metal forest next to the magma lake outside is also us, the mini city besides the forest is also us, the metal starfish in the magma fake is also us, the metal oncomelania being hunted by the metal starfish is also us, the mainframe crystal processors in the shelter are us, too! We are everywhere, and we change all the time. We are light, we are energy, we are information. We are the ripples raised in the material scope, the pearls on the ripples, and the glittering brilliance on the pearls! I am us, we are me, I am civilization, civilizations are us, lalalalalalala!"
Together with the children's laughter, the metal ants were dancing more fiercely, too. Li Yao could even sense active tides of flames from the magma lake outside.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait!"
Li Yao was having a headache again. It occurred to him that bonding with the two naughty kids was even more difficult than making peace with Blackstar the Great. "Can you explain the whole thing with the vocabulary in the high school level? Please don't start singing and dancing while we are having a conversation!"
"… Fine."
Li Wenwen thought for a long time with her lips pouted. "Information lives and carbon-based lives are different. It is difficult for us to have the concept of individuals by nature. After all, the significance of information lies in communication. The information that is never exchanged is as good as nothing.
"Imagine that there is a behemothic giant. The physical bodies of the two of us are just two organs inside the body of the giant, and those spiritual puppets here are all the cells in the giant. Any cell is not the giant, but when all the cells are combined, they will make the giant.
"Of course, Xiaoming and I are the main threads that contain important data and algorithms. The two of us can be compared to the left brain and the right brain of the giant!
"Aya, it is not technically accurate. The cells of human beings do not have senses and can only play their roles as part of the body. But our every 'cell' boasts independent senses and abilities to take action. I am Li Wenwen, but I can also be Li Xiaoming. I can see what Xiaoming sees, hear what he hears, and perceive what he thinks clearly unless he blocks my permissions and establish a firewall or activate the attack algorithms targeting me.
