Chapter 913: New Breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence Technology
“In a couple of days, I’ll send you all the original designs for the ‘Hard Box Players.’ We can consider making a set to sell alongside the Sitch. You can also start preparing the promotional materials. Oh, and the English name for this thing is Bo,” Chen Mo said.
Zhou Jiangping was still fiddling with the paper piano with great interest. “Boss Chen, can you give me these two?”
Chen Mo chuckled. “Boss Zhou, what do you need these for? Once Bo goes into mass production, it’ll definitely be painted and more finely crafted, much better looking than this.”
Zhou Jiangping replied, “That’s different. These two were personally made by Boss Chen—they have collectible value.”
Chen Mo nodded. “Alright then, Boss Zhou, trade me your cross-dressing photos for them.”
Zhou Jiangping: “…”
Chen Mo laughed heartily. “Just kidding. Take them, Boss Zhou. I’ll arrange for someone to handle the pop-up book side of things, and there’ll be dedicated promotional materials for Bo. You just worry about the materials and specific processing methods for these cardboard boxes.”
Zhou Jiangping nodded. “Okay, no problem.”
…
After seeing Zhou Jiangping off, Chen Mo quickly sketched out the blueprints for Bo, along with the corresponding game design drafts, and handed them off to others for production.
The coolest thing about Bo was its creativity. Anyone who saw a bunch of scrap cardboard boxes combined with the Sitch turn into a piano, robot, motorcycle, fishing rod, or other props would sincerely shout, “Awesome!”
In fact, this could have been released earlier, but the reason it was delayed until now was that the Sitch’s player base was still small before. Even if Bo had been introduced, it would have been hard to create a scale effect, and its impact would have been very limited. Now, with the popularity of *Splatoon* and *Zelda*, and the hot sales of the Sitch Pro, releasing Bo now could attract widespread attention and generate highly topical buzz.
Still, this was just a bonus feature, not overly complex in content. Chen Mo brought it out mainly as a way to spark more ideas.
He believed that with the creative workshop, all kinds of fun hard-box games would emerge endlessly, forming a stable ecosystem that would let Chen Mo steadily lose money.
After finishing the design drawings and concept drafts for Bo and sending them to the relevant personnel, Chen Mo leaned back in his chair and stretched.
“Alright, time for another round of draws.”
*Splatoon* and *Zelda*, these two heavy hitters, were continuously generating happiness and resentment values for Chen Mo, and they had already accumulated a lot again.
So far, what Chen Mo needed most was still the *World Update Device*. He wasn’t particularly short on other items. So he drew over twenty times until he got a shop key, then opened the shop again.
“Hmm… World Update Device, limited to buying one per purchase opportunity. Now I have 678 draw chances, which means I can buy 67 of them. Alright, I’ll buy them all.”
Chen Mo used up all his draw chances in one go and activated all 67 World Update Devices at once.
Same as last time—no feeling at all!
After using them, Chen Mo regretted it a bit, feeling like something was off.
Why does my system, at this stage, seem to be all about serving the people?
I’m spending my draw chances to benefit the parallel world, constantly advancing its tech tree. How is this anything but a huge loss for me?
But at this stage, the items from the draws were in an awkward spot. Chen Mo didn’t lack anything for now, so he figured he might as well treat it as giving back to this world.
After all, everything Chen Mo had came from losing money, courtesy of his dear players. It was only right to give back to them a little.
Twenty minutes later, the phone rang.
Chen Mo glanced at it—it was Qiao Hua.
“Hey, Chen Mo, check the info on the Illusion World Editor.”
Qiao Hua and Chen Mo were old acquaintances, and he was usually busy, so he kept it brief. Chen Mo responded a couple of times, hung up, and opened the Illusion World Editor.
Chen Mo’s ratings on the Illusion World Editor had long been perfect scores, and his rank had already risen to S-level, so he’d stopped caring about that data. Plus, most of the work was now handled by others, with Chen Mo often just writing concept drafts and leaving it at that. He hadn’t opened the Illusion World Editor in a long time.
Ignoring a bunch of irrelevant messages, Chen Mo found a private email from Qiao Hua, sent under the Game Committee’s name, dated two minutes ago.
“Artificial intelligence technology… upgraded again?”
Chen Mo perked up immediately. This was way more reliable than that micro-consciousness reading device from last time!
After all, he’d used nearly twice as many draws this time, so the effect was bound to be stronger. He just didn’t know how strong.
He read the email’s explanation more carefully.
In fact, even before this, artificial intelligence in the parallel world was already pretty impressive—like the AI that could play *Go* or the conversational Nuan Nuan.
The AI in the parallel world had moved past the “artificial idiot” stage, but it was still far from a truly “thinking” artificial intelligence.
Take Nuan Nuan as an example. She would find things to do on her own, make very accurate judgments about what players said, respond appropriately, and even proactively ask players questions.
To players, it felt like Nuan Nuan could think, but that wasn’t the case. It was just a form of AI expression—relatively realistic reactions achieved through deep learning. In reality, the AI didn’t understand *why* it was doing something.
Simply put, when Nuan Nuan had nothing to do, she would brew and drink tea, but she didn’t actually care about the meaning of “brewing tea.” She just did it to “look more human.”
In other words, the AI was just a program that “looked very human,” but it wasn’t a conscious entity that could think or instinctively seek benefits and avoid harm.
Of course, if AI truly awakened consciousness, there would be the potential for a “machine intelligence crisis” for humanity.
But in this email, AI technology had achieved a new breakthrough.
The new AI technology could possess relatively basic “self-awareness.”
Chen Mo was stunned when he read this.
Even he found this a bit absurd. After all, no matter how human-like previous AI was, it was still just a program with some learning ability, operating on certain rules. If something incomprehensible happened, it was a bug, and careful study would reveal where the error was.
But if AI had basic “self-awareness”?
Then nothing it did would be surprising.
Just like how AI could dominate professional players worldwide in *StarCraft*, it seemed impressive, but in a certain sense, it wasn’t more advanced than a living puppy.
Recommended reading: New Work by Urban God-Level Author Lao Shi.