On the first day we met, the doctor told me: The most important thing in artificial intelligence today is not intelligence, but artificiality.
At that time, I hadn’t set foot in this business, and what I said to him seemed to understand. So he took me to see the top floor of the company. This is the training ground of Situ AI, which was divided into small soundproof rooms with female workers from nearby villages in the city. They are old or young, and some people hold the mouse awkwardly.
Picture after picture flashed on the screen. They clicked on these pictures and read the names of the objects in these pictures aloud into the microphone. These sounds are collected, aggregated into the data center, and turned into small pieces, which will be turned into a brick to support AI voice recognition in the next process.
”Are you interested? Of course, not for voice recognition, but for something else.”
I nodded.
In the next few years, I also sat in a similar small room. My job was not to read pictures, but to recognize text. I read all kinds of texts, from novels to documentary literature, from drug instructions to Weibo, from business success to religion, I read them, I chew them, and then I summarize my emotions when I read them, and put these emotions together. The result data is fed to another AI system of the company.
It’s not simply “like” or “dislike”. I analyze each of my feelings, cut them into small pieces, name them, put them into the classification system, compare the data tables, and finally upload them to the database.
I can also read the text written by AI. I watched them go from shit to initial literary talent, and they are gradually indistinguishable from things created by humans.
I will also compare the results of artificial intelligence recognizing characters. Most of the time, their recognition is getting more and more accurate, but sometimes they will make mistakes and make big mistakes. It was so wrong that I felt that I had done nothing all year.
//Some songs are blue, others are red. Whenever the music plays, I hear colors, my ears are colorful, and my eyes scream. //
I took this sentence and went to the doctor. Tell him that the AI we trained can’t understand it at all.
Like it, there are hundreds of paragraphs of text that can cause recognition errors. According to the doctor’s request, I accumulated them and collected them into a small file. It has everything in it. Some of them are quite interesting.
//Aromatic hydrocarbons, usually refers to hydrocarbons with a benzene ring structure in the molecule. It is a kind of closed chain. It has the basic structure of a benzene ring. Many of these compounds found in the early history have an aromatic taste, so they are called
// aromatic hydrocarbons, which usually refer to hydrocarbons with a benzene ring structure in the molecule. It is a kind of closed chain. With the basic structure of a benzene ring, most of these compounds found in the early history have an aromatic taste, so these hydrocarbons are called aromatic hydrocarbons. //
This group is a typical example: the previous sentence is only half said, and AI will mistakenly judge it as “description of a tree”.
I really don’t know how it is judged.
But if I input this sentence in its entirety, AI will correctly judge it as “Describe a chemical substance.”
I don’t know how it is done.
The doctor asked me and others to collect every unrecognizable sentence, every string of text that could fool artificial intelligence. Feed them to another artificial intelligence.
This AI named “Sijie” swallowed all of this, not only text, but also pictures and sounds. It includes blueprints for bridges recognized as birds, poems recognized as mathematical formulas, faces recognized as bacteria, and songs recognized as fire alarms.
Then it starts to generate.
I asked the doctor what the name “Sijie” means.
He said: “The big world is specious.”
2
After working in the text recognition team for several years, the doctor transferred me to the “Sijie” project team.
Different project groups, the same work content.
”Sijie” will generate a lot of text, pictures and sounds based on the “errors” we feed to it. And my job is to identify these things. Separate the things that are meaningful to humans from the things that are incomprehensible in the eyes of humans.
I asked the doctor what this is doing. But he said, even if I explained it, I wouldn’t understand it.
In my opinion, “Sijie” seems to be engaged in art.
I don’t know anything about artificial intelligence. I only know art, and my last job was art. Write unsellable novels and poems that nobody reads. In the end, I got out of mental illness and went to the Internet to find free psychotherapy. Then I met the doctor.
”What you need is not a treatment.” He said, “You need a job. And I happen to be able to offer a job.”
That’s why I call him a doctor.
Although he probably never wore a white coat in his life.
In fact, the doctor is more like an artist than I am. Although the “similar world” he produced is only an artificial intelligence algorithm, many things it spit out are quite artistic. For example, the following passage:
// place was singing the song in silence, and it sounded // in the silence of the place
or –
// barabara fell in love with pull it pull it //
I collect content for doctors, until One day, a group of people in black T-shirts appeared in the company. They had serious expressions, and the doctors rarely showed serious expressions.
”—We want to watch the demo.” said the tallest man with the widest shoulders.
The doctor took them to the roof. Dozens of drones are placed there. He called all the people in the “Sijie” project team, including me. We sat curiously and puzzled on the plastic chairs on the roof. Those chairs are usually used for expansion games.
”A Jing, you put this on.” The
doctor pointed at me and said.
I took the dress from him. It was a hooded camouflage blouse, but it was not exactly a camouflage uniform because there was a very silly Husky printed on the chest of the camouflage uniform.
I glanced at him unhappily, and put on the blouse anyway.
Because the doctor also wore one, but there was no print on his chest, it was pure camouflage.
Then he asked a few male colleagues to bring eight pots of potted plants up to a height of one person, and he pulled up the camouflage hood of the smock and stood behind the potted plants, like a tree with white teeth.
”Okay,” he said.
A man in a black T-shirt took out the remote control, and the drones took off in droves. Passing the roof, flying back, and finally all hovering above the doctor’s head, the red laser spot fell on his face and chest, and he smiled and covered it with his hand.
”Substitution, substitution.”
He called me over, asked me to pull up my hood and stand there too.
The drones dispersed, regrouped, and swept across the roof. They swept over my head, time and time again. I’m pretty sure that the little camera on their abdomen has pointed to my location. But they did not respond at all.
”A Jing. You come out from behind the potted plant. Take off your hood.”
I did as the doctor told me.
It was very hot that day. I still remember the sun falling on my face. Those smart little planes flew over my head and even turned around my face. They walked around behind me, found me, and flew toward me fiercely.
But when they came around in front of me, they seemed to be confused by something and flew away again.
”Okay.” The tallest man waved his hand. “Sign a non-disclosure agreement. All of you.”
He thought about it, and added: “Here, sign on the spot.”
3
We were really there that day, on the roof, on the uneven plastic stools with small dots, and signed our first non-disclosure agreement in our life. I was confused and nervous at the time, and even scratched the paper.
This agreement is still valid today. So I can’t tell you, my readers, I can’t tell you the name of the doctor, I can’t tell you my name, I can’t tell you the “Sijie” project number or the name of my company. All the technologies I talk about are already public and well-known. I still can’t talk about the unknown parts. Although some of them have fallen asleep with the doctor in the deep sea.
Many years ago, when I was arguing with the doctor, he laughed at my paranoia about poetry. And I told him that life is incomplete, and art can provide a complete illusion.
If it is possible, I want to tell him. I’m wrong.
Some losses can never be filled with art.
4
The doctor opened the company outside the third ring road in a second-tier city. There, the broken factory he bought was very consistent with the illegal architectural style of the surrounding urban villages. In those years, I worked there during the day, competed for the small tomatoes in the free fruit in the cafeteria at noon, returned to the single dormitory at night, rubbed my cat, cleaned the room, took a bath, and fell asleep tiredly.
At that time, I never thought that this job would put me on the unmanned battlefield.
Of course, I haven’t actually been to the N area.
The unmanned battlefield is worthy of its name, and it has been empty since the start of the war. Local residents packed up and fled in different directions according to their beliefs and beliefs. Today, there are only drones, self-propelled robots, and self-propelled combat vehicles on that piece of land. They drove out of the factory, drove off the transport plane, crossed the dusty runway of the temporary airport, and entered the unmanned battlefield. They began to collide and bomb each other.
I have only seen area N in the analysis room. The long strip room is dimly lit, and there are two projection screens hanging side by side on the wall. On the left is the N area image generated by the artificial intelligence analysis terminal, and on the right is the N area scenery in the video taken by the drone.
They are very different.
People who have AIs like the “Similar World” are not just us, but also enemies. Both sides are doing everything possible to fool the eyes of the other’s autonomous combat robots.
Therefore, in the artificial intelligence analysis image, the entire N area appears incredibly weird, just like a figurative Calvino novel or a dynamic Dali oil painting.
I still keep a panoramic video of the artificial intelligence in Zone N. In that video, the sky is blue, the sun is bright, and a cable bridge hangs upside down between cotton-like clouds, rushing towards the camera.
This is not even the weirdest part of the entire video.
All kinds of inexplicable things ran on the ground that was damaged by cluster bombs. I can tell from the middle a blue kangaroo, two ropes thicker than a human, an enameled snuff bottle and six astronomical telescopes of different colors.
In the video, they look vague, broken, and beating, smashing into each other, like a group of unreal beasts.
The doctor’s big face was projected beyond these inexplicable things, higher than two stories, and laughed like a Maitreya Buddha coming from overhead.
If you compare the directly shot video, you can see that these foreign objects fighting each other are self-propelled robots painted with “fooling camouflage”; what is roaring in the sky is a large drone; and it is misidentified as The face of the doctor is a mobile smart fortress with a height of 26 meters.
The other party also used the “similar world” technique. Brushing camouflage that fools automatic war machines on each machine creates a serious illusion for the battlefield command AI, forcing us to go back to the era of manual control of war machines. And they even have room to control the details of these illusions.
At the time, we thought it was a demonstration by the other party against us.
The next night, the bad news came from the sea, and we only knew that it was the other party’s declaration that they believed that they had been victorious.
We finally regained the N area.
But no one can bring the doctor back to us.
Give me.
5
When they asked me to go over, it was the ninth day when the doctor’s plane crashed into the deep ocean. This time I signed an almost finger-thick non-disclosure agreement before I had to see the surviving pilot.
She looked tired, frightened, red and swollen, and full of restlessness. The room they arranged for her was spacious and comfortable, but this did not change the fact that she was being monitored. I looked at the records of every inquiry they made to her. But I decided to talk to her face to face.
When I walked in, she didn’t even look up, just shouted: “Get out! I said it! I don’t want to say it again!”
I sat down opposite her.
”I call him the doctor.” I said, “he called me the mirror.”
These words made her look up at me in confusion. I told her the name of the doctor, and I saw the expression on her face changed from dissatisfaction to sadness and guilt.
”I really didn’t notice anything.” She said, “Radar and vision are all normal.”
I shook my head.
”I believe that everything is normal on the radar.” I said, “In modern warfare, there are many ways to deceive the radar.”
She became vigilant again, “Then you mean, I didn’t see the person who hit my plane head-on. Something?”
”I think you saw it.” I said, “It’s just that the thing is so weird, so weird that you don’t believe it will be there, and so weird that you think it should be an illusion. And you are a pilot, your training I ask you to be rational and calm, and I ask you to ignore the moment when you see something incredible.”
She looked at me, her lips parted, and she stopped talking.
I took out my phone and showed her the video. Show her the binoculars and kangaroos fighting together, and the suspension bridge flying through the air and firing.
Her eyes widened.
”Many years ago,” I said, “there was a group of scientists…”
This story was told to me by the doctor. I complained to him that I knew nothing about his work. He smiled and touched my head and said that he wanted to tell me a story about artificial intelligence and his work that anyone who knew nothing could understand.
I remembered every word he said. And after many years, I will tell that pilot and also tell you.
6
Many years ago, there was a group of scientists. They want to create machines that are as smart as humans and capable of making judgments and choices. But they chose a different method to do it.
Some scientists, they use the method of making a clock to do it, as long as the “gear” is turned to the right position, the time can be given. The clock does not need to understand time itself.
Other scientists choose to use more difficult methods to imitate the human nervous system. Imitate your and my brains to make this kind of machine. They hope that machines can truly “understand” and “cognize”.
This is our most common artificial intelligence today-at least one kind of artificial intelligence.
At first, they were very successful.
But later, these scientists discovered that the artificial intelligence they made was flawed. Although these machines can recognize ninety-nine percent of pictures, sounds, and texts, there are always one percent of things that they will recognize incorrectly. Think of the dog as a motorcycle, the flower as a dancing woman, or the singing as an alarm.
Scientists have collected these things that can make artificial intelligence go wrong. Start researching. Here, they once again chose a different path.
Some people believe that this kind of error can eventually be eliminated. Therefore, they have been committed to correcting these errors.
But other scientists believe that this error is rooted in the basic structure of artificial intelligence-and this basic structure is also the basic structure of the human nervous system. They believe that this kind of error cannot be eliminated, but the law can be summarized.
What I do is the latter.
The “boundary” algorithm allows it to discover and generate these things that bring misunderstandings. It has surpassed color, image and meaning, and put a disguise on cognition itself.
Today, when autonomous weapon systems are spread all over the world and unmanned warfare is blooming, every misunderstanding picture and every piece of foolish camouflage may save a life from drone bombing; every misunderstanding text is It is possible to bypass the all-pervasive network surveillance and pass on vital passwords; each group of misunderstood voices may disrupt the other party’s information system.
I don’t know it was the war that found me. Or I found the war.
But let me repeat it again.
Every misunderstanding created by “Like Realm” is rooted in the basic structure of artificial intelligence algorithms, and this structure is born out of the human nervous system.
I am going further. To find a deeper misunderstanding.
What I am looking for are those misunderstandings that humans cannot avoid.
What I want to create is a truly specious world.
If we can remove the fog of these illusions, perhaps we can see the reality behind the world. If we can grasp the power of this false perception, we may be able to obtain even more powerful weapons.
And I have to be fast.
We have enemies, and they are as smart as we are.
7
”…I saw a moon.” She said, “I saw a moon flying towards me, and I could even see the crater above it. It was during the day, the sky was so bright, and the moon was so close to me, As if I could reach it with my hand, it was so small and its diameter was narrower than the wingspan of my airplane. It was like a perfectly round stone. I thought I must be too tired and had hallucinations. Then the moon hit On the plane. I thought it was my fault—”
I took out a picture. Show her.
”What did you see?”
Her voice fainted, “…moon.”
I took out a specially designed noise filter, which can disturb the inherent visual patterns and reset the deceived nerve signals. I folded it on the picture and showed it to her.
”What do you see now?”
”This is… it’s impossible…”
I sighed.
In that photo, a drone painted in foolish camouflage is flying across the sky.
8
”I want to call you a mirror.” The doctor once said, “Because you are farther from the reality than I am, and closer to the reality than I am.”
I am color blind. Very weak kind. I can’t distinguish between blue and green. This makes me immune to about 30% of the misperception camouflage designed for humans.
Among the people I work with, some are red-green color blindness, but more are very rare full color blindness. They are almost immune to most false perception camouflage.
According to our visual model, batches of monochromatic and color conversion filters are manufactured to protect those troubled soldiers and fooled artificial intelligence. Let them go through the gunpowder, through the battlefield, to find the truth.
But the world is losing reality day by day. On the front line, I even saw a whole building painted in foolish camouflage and disguised as a mountain range. People do not do this to win the war, but the fearful residents want to make themselves disappear from the world.
Recently, I heard that false perception camouflage has been developed for color-blind people. People have turned the method of deceiving artificial intelligence to deceive the human eye, and developed a general cognitive disturbance graph that can surpass the filtering device.
This makes me feel urgency.
Many scientists together took over the research work left by the doctor. They are as worried as I am.
What the doctor said still echoed in our ears.
It must be fast, he said.
We have enemies, and they are as smart as we are.
