Dream Guide

The local area network that Professor Mei planned to use for testing was quickly established.

The computer network of four buildings within an area of ​​about three kilometers is connected, consisting of a total of 12 computer rooms, more than 100 servers and 3,000 computers. All servers and terminals simulate the layout of a government agency, three enterprises, a business center, two schools and a residential area, install a large number of applications, and import huge amounts of data.

The professor recruited 3,000 students from the school and asked them to sit in front of the computer to manually import and convert data. In the first week, the entire network was connected to the external network. The professor allowed these students to do anything online, and did not even prohibit them from circumventing the wall and snooping on dark web materials.

Aoki followed the professor to a large office area on the second floor of the experimental building and saw about a hundred computers neatly placed, like an Internet cafe. There are many young people who look like college students sitting in front of the computer. Some are playing games, some are chatting on QQ, some are watching videos, and some are browsing the web. Of course, some have opened some strange software and don't know what they are doing.

Pass through the large office area and come to a small room. It's not small at all. The room is very spacious, but there are not enough computers. Aoki counted and there were only nine.

"Is this the center of the entire network?" Aoki asked.

"You can say yes, you can say no." Mei Yiqiu smiled mysteriously, "For us, this is the most important place. We can monitor all the data of the entire local area network through here. But we cannot control the outside world. Any computer, let alone eighty servers and more than two thousand computers spread across three other buildings.”

"Professor, can you disconnect from the Internet now?" Mei Ziqing asked.

"Oh, let everyone play for a while! Work after the Internet is disconnected will not be as fun as it is now." Mei Yiqiu said, "Do you all know what you have to do?"

"It should be very clear. All the process details of the volunteer work are included in the document, except that the final test process is in a sealed bag and they are not allowed to open it until the beginning." Mei Ziqing said.

"Well, very good." The professor nodded and smiled at Aoki, "Let's eat here today. The whole test process may be quite long."

"Why not set a time limit?" Aoki asked.

Mei Yiqiu said: "If the time is strictly stipulated, the accuracy of the Turing test will be greatly reduced. Oh, by the way, you know the Turing test, right?"

Aoki said: "I know, it is a method of testing artificial intelligence invented by Turing, the father of computers. Separate the human and the machine, and let people ask the machine questions. After multiple tests, if more than 30% of the people are not sure that they are being Whether the tester is a human or a machine, then the machine passes the test and is deemed to have human intelligence.”

Mei Yiqiu said: "Yes, it's that simple. But there is a big limitation, which is time. When we set the test time, it is equivalent to putting a tight spell on the tester, which will make the machine It’s easier to muddle through.”

"Muddle through?"

"If you think about it this way, if a machine has real intelligence, will it be instinctively unwilling to let humans know? It can be seen from the behavioral characteristics of human beings that we are always willing to show off in front of the weak, but in the strong Pretending to be crazy or even begging for mercy in front of others, isn't this a kind of survival wisdom of higher organisms? If a machine has consciousness, when it is not stronger than humans, it will definitely hide itself and try not to let us discover its wisdom."

"It makes sense. But if there is no time limit, when do you plan to end it?"

"Let those children decide for themselves. When he thinks he can end the game, he will end the game. I think people will always get bored before the machine, but if it is a machine with intelligence, it is difficult to say."

Mei Yiqiu's words were a bit unfathomable. Aoki still didn't understand how to do a Turing test on a local area network, so he simply asked: "Professor, as far as I know, current AI is based on algorithms, not hardware. Turing On the surface, the test is testing the machine, but in essence it is testing the software, or program, that comes with the machine. You have not installed any smart programs here, so who do you ask the testers to ask questions?"

Mei Yiqiu replied: "The hardware in this LAN alone cannot support the calculation of an AI with deep learning capabilities like AlphaGo. If it is an ordinary small program, it is meaningless. Moreover, even if an AlphaGo is installed, what will happen?" Like? As you said, the test object becomes the program, but AlphaGo does not require us to test it. Our object is not a program, but a neural network-like network based on the hardware. Therefore, the program is not important, what is important is the structure and messaging patterns.”

"But there are always questions in the Turing test. Who do they ask?"

"Our terminal computers have dozens of different brands and models, and at least ten brands come with a built-in smart assistant software, such as Microsoft's Cortana, Apple's Siri, etc. These are already very good smart programs, and they can all be used Used to ask questions. Moreover, our rules allow testers to freely download the software they think is currently the smartest, and can also install it through a disk. Ziqing," Mei Yiqiu shouted, "how many programs have been downloaded in total now? "

"Probably more than twenty." Mei Ziqing replied.

"So many?" The professor seemed a little surprised, "It seems that the creativity and unwillingness to admit defeat of young people cannot be underestimated!"

Mei Ziqing smiled and said: "Yes, I originally thought that they would all use the programs that come with big brands, because it is difficult to download smarter applications than Siri on the Internet. But their ideas are often different from ours. For example, some people think that qq Chatbot is smarter than Microsoft’s Cortana.”

"Well, this is a good thing. The more fragmented it is, the more helpful it will be for our experimental results." Mei Yiqiu said.

"But isn't the object of this test still software?" Aoki didn't quite understand.

Mei Yiqiu yawned and took out his pipe from his pocket.

"It looks like this on the surface, but when you understand this LAN as an intelligent guy, you won't think so." The professor said while filling the pipe with tobacco, "You can think of it as a smart guy." A huge octopus. All the terminal computers here are the arms of the octopus. We know that the arms of the octopus have independent nerve cords and can complete independent simple judgments and behaviors without instructions from the brain, and the brain only needs to issue instructions. Very abstract instructions will do."

"Computer networks are similar to octopuses. Every computer here, or every software we are going to test, has the ability to independently answer the tester's questions. But we know how intelligent these software are. If Without a more powerful brain behind them, there will be no abnormalities in their answers, and the test results can be imagined."

Mei Ziqing helped Mei Yiqiu ignite the fire, and then added: "We have done tests on a relatively small scale before, and hundreds of people without exception thought that the answer to their questions was a machine, not a person. This is actually You can expect this without doing experiments, because these software, whether it is Siri or Cortana, are all supported by algorithms and big data. They are not true artificial intelligence, and they are even less likely to have high intelligence when the Internet is disconnected. The performance is excellent. So the results of this test have long been expected."

"Then what's the point of this test?"

"Abnormal!" Mei Yiqiu took a puff of cigarette and said, "If the results are abnormal, then we can understand that the arms and legs of these octopuses have received higher instructions."