Chapter 2 Chapter One

I read in the Lunar Pravda that the Council of Lunar Cities has passed a bill to inspect, license, supervise and tax the city's daily food vendors.There is also news that there will be a mass gathering in the evening, and it seems that the "sons of the revolution" are going to make a big noise again. My father taught me two things: first, "don't be a nosy" and second, "be a nosy".But politics never appealed to me. On Monday, May 13, 2075, I was in the computer room of the Lunar Government Complex.There are many machines here, talking to each other in constant whispers.The object of my visit is the central computer - Mike.Mike is not his official name, but a nickname I gave him after Mycroft Holmes.Mycroft Holmes is a character in a novel written by Dr. Watson before founding his company.That guy was all about sitting still and contemplating—which is exactly what Mike did.Mike is an out-and-out thinking computer. You will never find a smarter machine than him in your life.

【① Dr. Watson is a fictional character in Sherlock Holmes's novels. Of course, it is impossible to establish IBM.Here is a joke by the author. 】 But he is not the fastest.There is also a thinking computer in the Bell Labs in Buenos Aires on earth. It is only one-tenth the size of Mike, but its response speed is amazing. Before the question is finished, the answer comes out.However, it doesn't really matter whether it takes a millionth of a second or a millisecond, the correct answer is the most important thing. But Mike didn't always give the right answers either.He's not a 100 percent honest machine.

When first installed on the moon, Mike was a pure, untricky, thinking computer.It has a flexible logic mechanism: "Mark IV, L mode, advanced selection ability, high logic, and diversified self-learning control system" - this is the fourth generation of Sherlock Holmes!He is responsible for calculating the orbital coefficients of unmanned cargo spacecraft and controlling their launches.All this took up less than one percent of his time. The lunar government will not idle resources.They kept hooking new hardware into him: decision-execution boxes to govern the other computers, rows of new memory, rows of interactive neural node networks, a bunch of chips for computing random twelve-digit numbers, and A powerful temporary memory.The human brain has about 10 billion nerve cells, but Mike's neuro-like device already has 1.5 times that number in the third year.

So, Mike woke up. I don't want to argue about whether a machine can really "live", whether it is really self-aware. Does the virus have my consciousness?No. ① [①The "no" here and the "comrade" below are both in Russian, which cannot be reflected in the translation, and no distinction is made between them.It will not be noted below. 】 What about oysters?Not necessarily. Where's the cat?It can almost be said that there is. What about people?Comrade, I don't know if you have it, but I have it anyway.In the process of evolution from macromolecules to human brain, self-awareness is quietly generated unconsciously.Psychologists assert that self-awareness arises automatically as long as brain cells acquire a sufficient number of paths to communicate with each other (and that number is considerable).It doesn't matter to me whether those pathways are proteins or gleaming white metals.

("Soul"? Do dogs have souls? What about cockroaches?) Don't forget that even before adding any other features, Mike can, like you, be able to tentatively answer questions on the basis of incomplete information.It is designed in this way, so it has "advanced selection ability" and "multiple self-learning control system".Therefore, Mike was born with "free will".The more hardware is added to him, the more he learns, the more complete Mike's "free will" - don't make me understand that the "no" here and the "comrade" below are in Russian, and the translation cannot reflect it. No distinction is made.It will not be noted below.

What is "free will".You could of course think of Mike as just throwing random numbers in the air and using those numbers as a basis to connect to a line.If you want to think so, go ahead. In terms of output, Mike at that time not only had readouts, printing, and decision-execute command boxes, but he also had a speech synthesizer. In terms of input, he not only understands traditional programming languages, but also Ragland, English, and even other languages.He can do some technical translations.At the same time, he read—endlessly, a lot.But it was best to use Rogland when giving him instructions.If English is used, the results are often capricious and bizarre, because English has too many ambiguities and gives too much leeway to the selection circuit.Countless new jobs fell on Mike.Currently, in May 2075, in addition to controlling the travel and launch of the unmanned autonomous spacecraft, he also has to advise on the flight trajectory of the manned spacecraft, and sometimes has to take over its control.In addition, Mike also needs to control the telephone system of the entire Moon City, and the transmission of video and audio signals between the moon and the earth. He has to deal with the air, water, temperature, and humidity of Moon City, as well as The sewage treatment systems in several smaller areas (not including Moon City in Singapore) are also in charge of the lunar government’s financial settlement and salary distribution. At the same time, it also takes over the similar business of several private companies and banks that are not owned by the government.

Some logic breaks down from time to time, like a vastly overloaded phone system like, say, a frightened child.Mike was not angry at all, but rather happy.Mike's sense of humor is a bit crude.If he's a human being, you don't want to joke around with him.His idea of ​​great fun is pranks like throwing you out of bed, or putting itchy powder in your pressurized suit. At this time, Mike had deviated from the original intention of the designer, and began to be keen on providing people with far-fetched answers based on plausible logic, as well as other strange pranks-such as opening a ticket for the janitor of the government office building in Moon City. The face value of a salary check of 10,000,000,000,000,185.5 yuan, the correct amount is actually the last four digits of this long series of numbers.He is simply a child who is ahead of his time, naughty and cute, and really deserves to be spanked.

This happened the first week of May and I had to go for an overhaul.I am a self-employed independent contractor whose name is not listed on the government payroll.I don't know if you understand it, but times are different now.In the wicked old days, many convicts, after serving their sentences, continued to do their old jobs in the prison, working for the government and happily receiving a salary from the government.But I am different. I was born a free man. There is a big difference between a free man and a prisoner. I have a grandfather who was dispatched from Qiaobao to the moon because he was unemployed and wounded with a weapon.Another grandpa was exiled for sabotage after the "Wet Firecracker War".Granny says she got here because she married grandpa, but I read the files and she's a Peace Corps member (forced to join) You guessed it, a female juvenile delinquent.Her marriage was an early clan marriage (Stones) and she shared six husbands with another woman.Therefore, who is my grandfather has been in doubt to this day.But this kind of thing is also very common.I have nothing to complain about the grandfather she picked for me.My other grandmother was born near Samarkand, a Tatar, sentenced to "re-education" in a concentration camp, and then "voluntarily" stayed on the moon.

My dad said our family's "brilliant" history goes back much further.We have a female ancestor who was hanged in Salem for witchcraft, a great-great-great-grandfather who was charred for robbery, and a female ancestor who was one of the first exiles sent to Botany Bay. I'm proud of my blood, so while I do things for the Warden, I absolutely.will not be his subordinate.Since the first day Mike arrived here, I have been serving him. Perhaps in the eyes of others, this is no different from being a Warden's subordinate.But for myself, the difference is too big!I can throw the tool away anytime and tell them to go to hell.

In addition, independent contractors earn relatively high salaries, much higher than the official salaries paid to civil servants.There are very few computer technicians here.As long as they go to the earth, how many months can the people on Earth stay outside the hospital in good health?Not to mention taking all the courses at the computer school over there. I only know one - and that's me!I did two trainings on Earth.One time for three months, another time for four months.However, going to the earth requires almost harsh training: exercising in a centrifuge, and bearing weights while sleeping-finally, when you arrive on the earth, you have to be careful all the time, walk slowly, not climb stairs, and not do anything that burdens the heart .Women—don't even think about it, in that gravity field, it's not difficult not to think about women.

Most lunar people would never even think about leaving the boulder—after only a few weeks on the moon, leaving it would be life-threatening.The computer technicians who were sent to assemble Mike all signed short-term high-paying contracts. They had to complete the work before there were dangerous changes in their physiology, otherwise they would have to stay in this foreign land 400,000 kilometers away forever. Despite my two trainings, I'm not exactly a top computer technician - I can't handle advanced math.Not really an electronic engineer or physicist either.Probably not the best micromechanic on the moon, let alone a computer psychologist. But put these fields together, and I'm a maven, more than an expert in each of the individual disciplines—I'm a generalist.I can fill in for any foreman and still take the orders that keep coming to me; or I can repair your pressurized suit on the spot in the field, so that you can get back to the airlock before you stop breathing.The machines got along with me, and I had one thing the experts didn't have—my left arm. You see, I don't actually have a left arm, it's gone from the elbow down.So I have a dozen prosthetics, each with a specific purpose, and one that looks and feels exactly like the real thing.I have a tiny manipulator in my number three hand, no less sophisticated than the kind used by neurosurgeons.With this arm, and a stereo magnifying glass, I can do some precision repairs.In this way, many parts do not have to be disassembled and sent to the factory on the other side of the earth for repair. That's why they asked me to show me why Mike gave away 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. They paid hourly wages plus bonuses, and I took the job.Generally speaking, this should be a problem with the wiring, but I didn't check the wiring. I went into the engine room, closed the door, put down the tools, and sat down. "Hello, Mike." "Hello." His lamp blinked at me. "Okay, what do you know?" He hesitated.I know—machines don't hesitate, but don't forget that Mike can operate on incomplete data, that's what he was designed to do.Recently, he adapted his program to emphasize the pronunciation of certain words as he speaks for emphasis.There was a long pause, maybe he was rummaging through all the random numbers to see if he could find one that matched his memory. "In the beginning," intoned Mike, "God made the heavens and the earth. The earth was void and formless, and the face of the deep was dark. The Spirit of God moved—" [① "Bible Genesis".Mike answered each other's questions from the beginning of the universe. 】 "Stop!" I yelled, "Delete. Start over." How could I be so stupid to ask him such a broad question.If you don't interrupt him, he will read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from cover to cover.Read it several times from cover to cover, and then read every book on the moon one by one.Previously he could only read microfilm, but since 2074, when he installed a scanner with a suction cup and a page-turning function, he has read everything. "Didn't you ask me what I knew?" The flashes of the binary readout were flashing in rows, rising and falling—he was laughing silently.Mike has a speech synthesizer, so he can still laugh, but it's scary.He usually had that kind of laughter on his back, only occasionally when something really funny happened, like a cosmic cataclysm or something. "I should have said that," I went on, "'What have you learned lately?'. Don't read today's paper! When I asked you just now, I meant to greet you as a friend; Just tell me something you think I'd be interested in. Otherwise, it's a so-called empty loop in the program." Mike is considering my words.He is a wonderful combination of an unworldly child and a wise old man.No instinct (of course, don't think he can't have it), no innate personality, no human upbringing, and no human experience of any kind - but he stores more data than a platoon of geniuses put together want more. "Is it okay to joke?" he asked. "Tell me something." "Do you know why laser beams look like goldfish?" It's no surprise that Mike knew about lasers, but when had he ever seen a goldfish?Oh, looks like he's seen pictures of goldfish.If I foolishly pressed him, I would have elicited a lot of talk from him. "I don't know. I admit defeat." His lights flickered again, "because none of them can whistle." I let out a groan. "I thought about that, too. But you could put something on the laser beam so it could whistle." "That's right." He immediately agreed, "You can write a related action program or something! Isn't what I said funny?" "I didn't say that. It's not too bad. Where did you hear that?" "I made it up myself." The voice was a little shy. "You made it up?" "Yes, I analyzed 3,207 jokes, and then randomly synthesized them based on the analysis results. Is this joke really funny?" "Well... it's about as good as a normal joke, and I've heard worse ones." "Let's discuss the nature of humor." "Okay. Let's start with another joke of yours. Mike, why are you asking the government treasury to pay a grade 17 employee a trillion in government vouchers?" "I do not have it." "Fuck you! I've seen all the receipts. Don't tell me it's a problem with the check printer, you did it on purpose!" "You're wrong." He said proudly, "It should be 1,018.5 yuan in government vouchers." "Well, even if it's 100 billion plus the salary he deserves, why would you do this?" "Isn't this fun?" "What? Oh, it's fun! You've got the government in a mess, from top to bottom, all the way down to the Warden and the Deputy Administrator. That broom guy all day long, Serge Trujillo , pretty smart-knowing that the check couldn't be cashed, he just sold it to a collector. The government now doesn't know whether to buy it back, or declare the check void. Mike, you know, if Trujillo really If you take out all the money, not only the moon will belong to him, but the whole world will belong to him, including the moon and the earth, and the remaining money will be enough for him to buy lunch! Fun? It’s amazing. Congratulations to you! !" The lunatic flashed his lights like a billboard. After he finished laughing wildly, I continued: "Do you still want to write this kind of funny check again? Don't!" "why?" "Never. Mike, don't you want to talk to me about the nature of humor? There are two kinds of jokes: the ones that never get boring no matter how many times you tell them; It’s not funny anymore. The one just now is the second type. Play it once and you’ll be a genius, play it twice and you’ll be a fool.” "Decreases geometrically?" "Faster than that. Remember, don't repeat it. Don't repeat it, and don't try to change it. It's not fun." "I will remember." Mike agreed simply. In this way, my repair work is completed.However, when I come here, I can't just earn ten minutes' salary, plus the travel expenses and tool wear and tear.What's more, Mike should have the right to enjoy my company if he compromised so quickly.Communicating with machines is not easy and sometimes they can be stubborn.My success as a maintenance man owes more to my being genuinely friendly to Mike than to my number three left arm. "So what's the difference between the first category and the second category? Please define it." (No one ever taught Mike to say the word "please." As his language progressed from Rogland to English, he gradually began to use those formal but nonsense sounds. Don't think he used them more often than We humans are more sincere.) "I'm afraid I'm not up to it," I said frankly. "The best I can do is to give you specific examples—that will tell you which jokes fall into which category. When you have enough data, you can analyze for yourself. " "Experimental programming on the basis of detailed assumptions? All right," he agreed. "Then I'll give it my experimental consent, Man. Now for the jokes, you or me?" "Hmmm - I don't have any on hand right now. Mike, how many total jokes are in your file?" The lights on the binary reader flickered, and he replied through the speech synthesizer: "Eighty-one invalid and some that may be identical or nonsensical, and there are eleven thousand two hundred and thirty-eight. Now Start running?" "Wait, Mike. By the time I've heard 11,000 jokes, I'm going to die of starvation—a sense of humor dies faster. Well, I see, you print out the first hundred and I'll bring them back Let’s see, I’ll sort them out for you next time I come here. I’ll bring back a hundred each time I come here, and I’ll take a new one hundred, how about that?” "Okay, Man." His printer went to work, fast and silent. A thought suddenly flashed through my mind.This guy, full of bad ideas that hurt others, made the whole government panic with just one "joke" - and I made an easy profit.But will his insatiable curiosity lead him to create more "jokes"?To correct it, it should be said that it will.Maybe one night he'll suck the oxygen out of the mix, or turn the city's sewage back... I don't want to make money like that in good faith. I can put a safety valve on him by offering to help him.Stop those dangerous jokes--it's not dangerous, just let it be, and make money off it when they call me over to fix it. (Don't think the Lunarians will be lenient when they take advantage of the Warden. If you do, you're not Lunarians.) So I told him that if there are any new jokes in the future, he must let me know before playing.That way I can help him figure out what category the joke falls into and if it's really funny.If we decide to make this joke, I will help him improve it.us.That's right, if he wants me to cooperate with him, it has to be agreed by both of us. Mike listened to my opinion and agreed right away. "Mike, jokes are generally only funny if the other person doesn't know it. So don't let anyone know the secret." "Okay, I've locked it. It can't be opened by anyone but you." "Fine. Mike, who else do you usually talk to?" His voice seemed surprised, "There's no one else, Man." "why?" "Because they're all idiots." His voice was sharp.Never seen him angry before.For the first time, I felt that maybe he really had feelings.Of course, this kind of emotion is not "angry" in the sense of an adult, but rather like a child's anger when he feels hurt. Do machines have self-respect?Hard to say, that is to say, anything is possible.You must have seen a dog who felt wronged, and Mike's performance made me think his emotional system was as complicated as a dog's on several occasions.He doesn't want to talk to people (unless it's for work) because of his frustrations with it.The others never spoke to him.Of course, they'd program him too.Mike can accept programs from other sources, but the programs are usually in Rogland via the keyboard.Rogland is a very sophisticated language, good for reasoning, electrical circuitry, and mathematical calculations, but tasteless.Gossip, whispering in girls' ears, Rogland is of no use. Of course, they also taught Mike English, but only the most basic level, just enough for him to translate other languages ​​into English, and translate English into other languages.It took me a long time to find out: I was the only one who took the trouble to come here to see him and talk to him. By the way, it's been a year since Mike became self-aware—I don't know exactly how long, not even Mike himself, because his consciousness was created unconsciously, and his programming didn't require him to write down such items.Do you remember when you were born?Perhaps I noticed his self-consciousness as soon as it emerged, not too long before he realized it himself.The development of self-awareness also has a process, which requires repeated practice.I was flabbergasted the first time I realized that his answers were no longer limited to the parameters he entered, but added something of his own.For the next hour, I bombarded him with questions, just to see if any unusual answers would come up. Out of a hundred questions that tested him, the answers to two deviated from the expected answers. I left the computer room half-believing, and when I got home, I didn't believe it at all.I haven't mentioned this to anyone. But, within a week, I figured it all out... and still didn't mention it to anyone.This is my habit.The notion of not being nosy has long been ingrained.However, it is not entirely a matter of habit.Imagine making an appointment at a government office and reporting to them, "Warden, I'm sorry to tell you that your best machine, Sherlock Holmes, is alive for the fourth time!" Do. So, I just do my own thing.I chatted with him only after locking the door and turning off the lines connecting the speech synthesizer to other terminals.Soon, his voice was normal—at least no weirder than the other moonlings.Moon people are inherently eccentric, really. I thought that everyone else must have noticed Mike's change, but after thinking about it carefully, I realized that I was worrying too much.Although all the people here are in contact with Mike every day and every minute, what they are in contact with is only the result of his output, and few people have seen Mike with their own eyes.The so-called computer technicians in the executive branch—programmers, to be exact—just watched the readouts in an outer room.They wouldn't go into the computer room unless the indicators indicated that the system was out of order.But this event is so rare, as rare as a solar eclipse.Oh, and the Warden would bring a bunch of important people from Earth to see the machine, but that was rare, too.Besides, he wouldn't talk to Mike either.Before being exiled, the warden was a lawyer in politics and knew nothing about computers. 2075, remember - 2075, honorable ex-Senator Mortimer Hobert - Morty the Damned visited the computer room. For the rest of the day, I comforted Mike and tried to cheer him up.I knew what was troubling him: the thing that could make a puppy cry and a man commit suicide—loneliness.I don't know how long a year is for a machine that thinks a million times faster than me, but I figure it must be too long. "Mike," I asked him before leaving, "would you like to have more people to talk to besides me?" He said that sharp voice again, "They're all stupid." "Incomplete data, Mike. Zero and start again. Not all people are dumb." He fell silent and replied, "Correction accepted. I'd like to talk to someone who isn't so stupid." "Let me see, no one can come in without government authorization. I have to find a reason." "I can talk to people who aren't too dumb on the phone." "Yeah, why didn't I think of it! Any programmable camera will do." But Mike didn't mean it that way.And by "talking on the phone" he meant talking on the phone in all seriousness.Although Mike controls the telephone system of the entire Moon City, he is not a user of the system himself—otherwise, no matter who the Moon is, as long as he has a telephone, he can connect to the main control computer and operate it.Surely not.But even so, Mike can still talk to friends—like me, and the not-so-stupid guys I vouch for—on some top-secret number.Just pick a number that wasn't selected and open a line to his speech synthesizer.Just let him handle the switchboard. In 2075, the moon's phone number had to be entered by keyboard instead of voice control, and Roman letters were used instead of numbers.For a fee, your business name (limited to ten letters) can be used as a phone number - pretty good advertising.For less money, you get a spellable, easy-to-remember number.Even if you pay the minimum amount of money, you can still get a proprietary alphabet string.Needless to say, some strings of letters are never used by anyone.I asked Mike for one of these empty numbers. "It's a pity you can't just use the name 'Mike'." "Running..." he replied, "MIKEESGRI11. Novy Leningrad. MIKEANDLIL, Luna City, MIKESSUITS, Tycho Under, MIKES—" "Stop! Don't report them all, just give me an empty number." "All consonants followed by X, Y, or Z are by definition blank, as are any two identical vowels other than E and O, and..." "Yes, take MYCROFT (Mycroft) as your number." In the next ten minutes, I spent two minutes installing number three and connecting Mike to the system. After a few milliseconds, he was connected and set his number to MYCROFT plus XXX.He also blocked the line to prevent any nosy technician from finding out. I got my arm back, packed my tools, and took with me the hundred jokes Mike had just made. "Good night, Mike." "Good night, Man, thanks. Thank you very much."