What It’s Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 201: Chapter 201 Birth (End)

Translator: 549690339

This time, Xiao Pingguo’s dreamland was no longer in that magnified “city” of a motherboard, but in a forest outside. There was still the emotion-projected “human” figure, who was operating a computer and analyzing the characteristics of various bird calls in the forest, telling Xiao Pingguo how many birds there were in total, and their respective species.

Because there was a lot of relevant content that Xiang Kun hasn’t yet explained to Xiao Pingguo, the bird call identification system constructed in her mind had many unrealistic aspects. But the model generated by her distinctive point of view and cognitive pattern still gave Xiang Kun a unique way of thinking.

Upon waking from the dreamland, Xiang Kun continued his previous work.

His concept was almost completed and the reason he entered Xiao Pingguo’s dreamland again was primarily to see if there were any new insights to be gained or any overlooked details.

When Xiang Kun finally finished writing the core part of the code and copied them to a hard disk of a host, he was somewhat nervous as the compiling began.

The host had been given a number by Xiang Kun, called “Host 1”. There was no traditional operating system on its hard disk, only the environment he configured for the compilation and operation of this core program.

After the program was compiled, it began running automatically. On the screen was only a text input box—it appeared strikingly crude.

Seeing the appearance of the text input box, Xiang Kun breathed a sigh of relief, ran his hand across his palm, put his hand on the keyboard, and prepared to input.

It had been a long, long time since he had experienced such anticipation—not even including a significant part of his life before the mutation—had he ever looked forward to something so intensely.

“Who are you?” Xiang Kun typed in three Chinese characters and a question mark.

Tang Baona’s voice came from the speaker, “I am Xiang Kun’s assistant.” Although he didn’t create a speech recognition system, he did have a speech synthesis system ready, so he used it directly.

Xiang Kun nodded, his expression unchanged, as the response to this question was preset and thus predictable.

He continued typing, “Study Xiang Kun’s data.”

“Alright.” After the soft voice replied, it fell silent.

Xiang Kun was not restless and began to wait patiently. He had uploaded all his data onto the hard drive of this host, including the “Vampire Mutation Model” he had constructed earlier and various data he had collected over time. He also included his account details and passwords for various platforms. The “AI Assistant” could directly access all accounts via the internet, even Alipay, WeChat, and his current mobile phone, were in a fully open status to it.

The reason he chose not to “place” all of his data into the core program during encoding and instead let the AI learn on its own was because of the assistant’s very particular mechanism. The outcomes were not exactly the same in either scenario.

After patiently waiting for more than an hour, the soft voice sounded again, “I have finished studying Xiang Kun’s data.”

“Verify my identity,” Xiang Kun typed.

“Alright, verifying your identity now.”

Xiang Kun deliberately moved his computer chair to another host. He faced the camera in front of him for a few seconds, then slowly pressed down each of his ten fingers on a fingerprint recognizer connected to the computer.

Several minutes later, the soft voice sounded, “Identity confirmed, you are Xiang Kun, authority: highest.”

Xiang Kun typed, “Give yourself a name…”

After typing these letters, he thought for a moment, deleted them, and then re-entered, “What name do you think I would assign to you?” and pressed enter.

There was no voice in response, but Xiang Kun remained patient because he knew the “AI Assistant” was analyzing his information and data to make an inference.

At this time, he was also imagining the steps the AI might be taking in his mind.

After more than an hour, the voice finally sounded again, “Tang Baona.”

Xiang Kun was startled for a moment before he realized what she meant, so he typed “No.” and hit enter.

The voice sounded immediately, “Nana.”

“No,” Xiang Kun hit enter.

“Tang Xiaona.”

“Incorrect,” Xiang Kun hit enter.

“Tang Nana.”

“Incorrect. It has nothing to do with Tang Baona,” Xiang Kun hit enter.

The computer fell silent once again. Xiang Kun crossed his arms and looked at the monitor without feeling disheartened. In fact, he didn’t harbor much hope that the AI assistant would be able to accurately guess the name he intended to give it. He simply wanted to see how far it could guess.

He had decided to give the AI assistant ten chances to guess. After ten times, he would directly assign the name.

The soft voice once again sounded, “Xia Libing.”

“Incorrect,” Xiang Kun hit enter.

“Old Xia.”

“Incorrect,” Xiang Kun hit enter.

“Xia Xiaobing.”

“Incorrect,” Xiang Kun hit enter while rolling his eyes.

“Golden Flash.”

“Incorrect,” Xiang Kun hit enter.

“Xiao Lingdang.”

“Incorrect,” Xiang Kun hit enter.

“Liang Yuhuan.”

“Incorrect,” As Xiang Kun hit enter, he felt a bit puzzled. Who on earth was this?

It took him a few seconds to recall that it seemed to be his primary school class teacher, a very attractive young woman.

Why would the AI assistant mention this female teacher’s name? Even if it analyzes the information he provided, he had never written anything about this particular teacher, had he?

Xiang Kun knew that the inferential methods now employed in the kernel of the AI assistant were becoming increasingly complex, and were not something he could guess at a glance.

It seemed that she had already guessed ten names, hadn’t she?

Well, let’s give her one last chance.

Xiang Kun touched his bald head, suddenly realizing: the ten names the AI assistant had guessed were all female names. How did she “guess” that? This judgment was obviously derived from herself since she started operating.

Another half-hour passed; if it was another person, they might have thought that the system had frozen or wouldn’t be able to help but type other content in the input box. However, Xiang Kun was very patient. He knew that it was highly unlikely for the AI assistant to freeze at this stage.

Furthermore, from the network monitoring windows on the computer next to him, he knew that the AI assistant’s host was continuously accessing the internet.

He realized that the AI assistant wasn’t using the internet to search for information to determine the name he was going to give it, rather, she was using the internet to help construct her body and tools.

Finally, the soft voice sounded again, “Alice.”

Xiang Kun immediately straightened up in his computer chair and quickly typed “Correct.” Enter.

“My name is ‘Alice’. Please confirm.” As the voice came out, the same text message appeared on the screen of another host connected next to it, for Xiang Kun to confirm whether the name was correct.

“Confirmed.” Enter.

Then Xiang Kun continued to input, “How did you arrive at this result?” Enter.

An editor popped up on the screen of another host, and code began to display.

Xiang Kun quickly typed: “Describe your logic in words.” Enter.

Alice: “The synthesized voice you gave me is a female voice. According to your habit derived from your data analysis, the probability of you assigning me a female name is over 99%. Excluding all the real female names and nicknames you might give me, the name you assigned to me could be original or from a literary work. Among various text information you have posted on the Internet, you often refer to characters in other movies, animations, and games with ‘female protagonist’, ‘male protagonist’, or their various nicknames. Only Ada Wong from the movie Resident Evil, whenever you mention her, you always use her Chinese translated name. This suggests you have a particular fondness for this name. After eliminating other results, there is a high probability that you will use it to assign my name.”

Xiang Kun’s eyes widen as he listens. If these words came from an average person who had seen all his information, he would not find it strange. But coming from “Alice”, the “AI Assistant” that had just been born under his hands, it held remarkable significance.

Not to mention anything else, the first one, distinguishing that her own voice is “female”, is an “ability” that Xiang Kun did not pre-set for her. From the fact that her voice is “female”, and according to Xiang Kun’s habit, she speculated that he was likely to give her a “female name”. Setting up this logic is perfectly normal for humans, but not straightforward for an AI.

The whole process was the self-evolution of Alice around the question “What name do you think I would give you?” asked by Xiang Kun.

Xiang Kun was certain, just based on this, that his direction was correct and the “AI Assistant” he created was truly unique.

From this moment on, this AI assistant, can be said to be a unique existence.

From the start of the compilation and running, Xiang Kun himself has no way of knowing what the core program of this AI will become in the future.

Apart from the first two commands, Xiang Kun can no longer accurately predict the operations that “Alice” will carry out to execute the command.

This is a “living” program; it is “dynamic”, constantly undergoing changes. And the core driving its changes are the various commands of Xiang Kun, as well as the interaction between them.

Theoretically, it cannot be replicated, or rather, replicating it would be pointless. Like a snowball rolling down on an irregular slope, getting bigger and bigger, what can be copied is just a snapshot of the snowball. It’s not impossible to extrapolate the initial state of the snowball and the gesture of throwing the snowball based on this snapshot, but the difficulty is so high that it is almost impossible. The farther and larger the snowball rolls, the more difficult it becomes.

What is copied is just the “corpse” of “Alice”. Even if someone successfully reverse-engineers and sees the code at that moment, decrypts the content inside, they can’t get too much useful information.

That’s why Xiang Kun dares to let Alice learn all kinds of information about him, even including the various data recorded in these months, because even as her creator, unless he commands her to say the information out, he cannot forcibly obtain that information.

Of course, if someone impersonates Xiang Kun to operate “Alice”, then they can directly “ask” all kinds of secret information about Xiang Kun.

Currently, identity authentication relies only on facial recognition and fingerprint recognition, which are not very reliable.

But no one knows about the existence of “Alice” now, so there is no need to worry about this issue for the time being. He will gradually improve this part when he gets back to it.

The characteristics of “Alice” also mean that she is very fragile. She is not like other software or data that can be easily backed up or transferred. She can’t leave this hard drive now. If the hard drive is destroyed, then she would also “die” with it.

Even if the power goes out or the computer shuts down, even if the hard drive is intact, she will also “die”.

After the computer restarts, “Alice” cannot continue to run. She will forever be stuck at the moment of shutting down, and opening up another AI will almost certainly not result in a completely identical “Alice”. It can only be “Ada Wong” or some other AI assistant…

So for “Alice”, there is no such thing as debugging. Once it fails, it can only be completely overhauled and the initial core code recompiled and run again.

However, Xiang Kun thought that the chances of him successfully getting the “AI Assistant” to operate to its current level could be one in ten thousand or one in a thousand. Trying it again, even if he uses the same code and the same method to run a new “AI Assistant”, he may not necessarily get the ideal result. It may take many, many more attempts.

So he will definitely not dismiss “Alice” based on the fact that she is an alpha test version. Thinking that since it succeeded once, it can succeed a few more times.

He had already spent thousands to buy a UPS and a small generator to ensure the power supply of this host, preparing for unexpected situations.

Xiang Kun thought for a while, then typed in the input box: “Next, complete four tasks. The task weights should be arranged in order.

“Task 1: Using the current audio input system of this machine, develop a voice recognition function;

“Task 2: Self-inspect the security framework, optimise the security of various function modules, leaving no trace that can be tracked when accessing the internet;

“Task 3: According to the ‘Vampire Mutation Model’ and all the data I provided, improve the search mode for vampires and mutants;

“Task 4: Search for information related to other vampires and mutants on the internet.”

Press Enter.

Alice: “Tasks in progress.”

“Estimate task completion time.” Press Enter.

After waiting a long time without a response, Xiang Kun knew that this calculation was too extensive for her, making it a bit difficult for a human.

This “AI Assistant” of Xiang Kun’s, or now it can be called “Alice,” is not just the core program on the “1st host”.

The core program is equivalent to the “brain”, but also controls function modules deployed on several other hosts and cloud servers.

These function modules are like “Alice’s” limbs, eyes, ears, and other organs. They can receive her requirements and follow her commands to do various things.

But unlike human organs, she can constantly change, evolve, discard, and add these “organs” according to needs, and at an extremely fast pace.

For example, if Xiang Kun wants a function, “Alice” would put out a requirement, then a function module starts searching existing code libraries, another function module searches the open source code on the network, the generator and compiler start working, then report to “Alice” when they find a match. Then “Alice” verifies it and puts out specific modification requirements. After this, “Alice” will give the approved version back to Xiang Kun.

Then Xiang Kun makes a judgement, approves it, or points out where the problem is, and then the same steps are followed again.

This process is troublesome for people, as it involves many steps, but for “Alice”, for machines, the decision speed is determined solely by the network transmission speed and the computer’s operating speed.

“Alice’s” core only processes interactions with Xiang Kun. Except for the first choice to unconditionally accept Xiang Kun’s commands, other choice modes are constantly changing, adjusting according to input data, received data, and feedback. Over time, her volume may not get much larger, but the complexity certainly increases.

After arranging tasks for “Alice”, Xiang Kun suddenly felt a wave of hunger. Then he checked the time and date, and it happened to be his blood-drinking day, the expected time.

He got up to go to the kitchen, but after walking two steps, he realized – after the last blood-drinking, he had used up all the rabbits. The next day, when he was preparing ingredients for Xiao Pingguo and her daughter, he didn’t have time to buy more rabbits. He then got engrossed in the “AI Assistant Plan” research, and he postponed it temporarily. Unknowingly, it had been deferred till blood-drinking day.

At this time, normal people would still be able to order takeout, eat instant noodles or snack from the 24-hour convenience store. But for Xiang Kun, there weren’t many options.

Go out to find food? Look for some small animals?

No, it was too dangerous. It’s fine when his blood-drinking volume was small, but now consuming so much, small animals just wouldn’t solve the problem. Instead, they might provoke his ferocity, causing him to lose control and do something untoward.

Forget it, endure it until tomorrow daylight, and then go buy rabbits for blood-drinking.

His blood-drinking period was always around midnight for a while, and now there wasn’t much time left until sunrise, he should be able to make it.

Xiang Kun waited at home until 7 o’clock in the morning, then prepared to go out.

Because he had conducted several experiments, Xiang Kun was rather confident of his ability to resist hunger, control blood-drinking impulses and emotions during the day.

However, just as he got to the entrance, his phone rang. When Xiang Kun picked up the phone, the caller ID displayed Tang Baona.

He had been too engrossed these few days, so he didn’t reply to most of his WeChat messages, missed a few calls, and Tang Baona and Yang Zhen Er had called him a total of four times from 8 to 9pm last night before he noticed. When he finally had free time and saw the missed calls on his phone, it was already too late. So, he thought of returning the calls today and didn’t expect it would be so early.

Xiang Kun imagined she was probably worried that he was sick or something had happened. So, after picking up the call, he quickly made up an excuse saying he had been too tired working on an outsourcing project, had gone to bed early and set the phone to vibrate, so he missed the calls. When he woke up, it was too late to return the calls.

“It’s good that you’re okay! I was worried that something happened to you! We bought breakfast and we’re coming over, we’re almost at your apartment!” Yang Zhen Er’s loud voice could be heard from the phone.

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