Heading to Hell

At nine o'clock, the city gradually became quiet. For Li Qingming, this was also the most comfortable moment of the day.

In the high-rise apartment, after washing, he had put on black pajamas, picked his ears with cotton swabs, and walked out of the bathroom fresh.

But the two mothers set up a projection in the living room and nodded to him with solemn faces.

"Class?" Li Qingming frowned on the spot, "Now?"

Qin Li raised her glasses and hummed: "You are at a crossroads of life choices. We have the responsibility to tell you the true face of society."

"Oh." Li Qingming then walked to the bedroom with his ears out, "Send it to the email."

"Alas!" Yang Zi hurriedly stepped forward and pulled her, "She has been preparing for this lesson for a long time and has been waiting for this day."

Qin Li was even more convincing: "The agreement stipulates that we have the right to provide you with one hour of ideological guidance every week!"

"But you have violated the agreement countless times today."

"Okay, okay!" Yang Zi pulled Li Qingming and said, "There is no chance to talk about it in the future, so let her pretend!"

Li Qingming glanced at Qin Li again, and after confirming that she was extremely determined and looking forward to it, he had to sit on the sofa.

"Thank you." Qin Li then walked to the projection screen, put on the control finger gloves and said seriously, "For the last lesson, I want to tell you the origin of today's world and reveal the nature of society. Are you ready?"

"I took a history class - ha -" Li Qingming yawned.

"Listen!"

"I know, ha - hurry up -"

Therefore, in this sudden sleepiness, Li Qingming was filled with historical knowledge.

Fortunately, Qin Li condensed it a lot and made it straightforward. At the same time, he put aside his stance and only pursued the truth. This is how he came up with this concise contemporary history starting from the first year of the secret realm.

The starting point of this history was the moment the No. 1 Secret Realm broke out 21 years ago.

In the ensuing disputes, the world has indeed undergone earth-shaking changes.

But not that big.

Looking back from today, the changes the secret realm has made to the world are actually very limited.

Those transcendent secret powers and treasures are actually more like a comprehensive upgrade of "military technology", which is nothing more than enriching the arsenal of tools for human beings to harm each other, and by the way starting a new round of arms race.

This naturally triggered a series of competition and changes, but it did not completely subvert anything.

Ultimately, the secret industry only adds several resources and means of warfare to the world. Even though there are many tricks, it never changes the production process itself.

What really changes the world is AI.

In the old science fiction imagination, AI was probably a kind of robot that worked for humans. It could do anything for you to ensure that you live comfortably.

Or maybe the evil villain suddenly decided to enslave mankind one day, and mankind had to rise up to resist.

But it's actually not that intense at all.

Initially, AI indeed set off quite a wave. It started to drive autonomously, started to write documents and forms, and started to generate paintings and songs. As a result, the employment environment was changed. Mid-range technical positions were greatly reduced, and the demand for engineers in society dropped to a freezing point. , on the contrary, the demand for workers is increasing day by day, which has catalyzed the further decline in the fertility rate of the global educated population.

But within a few years, AI, like all technologies, was stuck at an insurmountable node.

It can indeed drive safely in 99.9% of cases, but there is always a small chance of making stupid mistakes. This makes today's self-driving AI have to follow extremely high safety standards, and its speed is also very limited. death, so most people still choose the semi-automatic solution.

AI can indeed write a novel in one minute, or generate a comic in half an hour, but its look and feel is stuck in a half-high place. It can be very beautiful, but it will never have a soul. It will get boring after a while, just like an unlimited supply of fat meat. If you eat too much, it will make you sick.

For industries such as lawyers and doctors that are based on fixed knowledge and experience accumulation, AI has really liberated productivity and can serve everyone at almost zero cost, and its accuracy is much higher than the industry average.

But when it comes to truly complex cases and illnesses, experts still need to appear.

Surgeons also remain at the top of the professional chain of contempt.

As for teachers, in principle, this profession should have been eliminated long before the AI ​​era. The Internet and books have included all the public knowledge in the world. Why do we have to find someone to read it face to face?

But teachers like Han Chun still exist.

Just because people still need people, especially children.

In short, just as the calculator has replaced 99% of human calculation work, it can never become a mathematician.

AI eventually became a pure tool, helping people complete basic and complicated tasks and maximizing the boundaries of individual abilities.

It must be admitted that AI has brought great progress to human production, but it is still far from reaching the expectations of science fiction.

but.

It still turned everything upside down.

From another point of view--

distribute.

In fact, distribution has never been difficult since primitive tribes.

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It is clear who exerts the most force when hunting, and which mother has more babies to feed. Everyone has a balance in their mind.

Later, from the contribution of each person in a team to the price of each consumable in a project.

Who is more deserving of this promotion, and which company is more qualified for this project.

Judging these has never been difficult.

But in reality, the smartest decision-makers go against common sense and confuse right and wrong again and again.

It's not because they're stupid, of course, it's just that no one can overcome nepotism and greed.

As a result, there are always countless lazy fools who get something for nothing, and countless diligent workers who are unhappy.

Wealth and production capacity are squandered day after day, and most people do meaningless things, and have to flatter and follow the crowd, and work their whole life just to get the approval of some idiot above.

This is an age-old problem that even junior high school students can see clearly, but there is still no solution.

Until the arrival of “managerial AI”.

Initially, it was used to allocate performance bonuses to a department.

Then there is the evaluation of promotions and demotions in a department.

Later, it became involved in the company's procurement, budgeting and auditing.

Things have been developing steadily up to this point.

Until one day, a large company made a reasonable and surprising decision——

Use it to fight corruption.

The directors soon discovered that in the vast and endless ocean of data, AI was like a bloodthirsty shark everywhere, and no fishy smell from any account could escape its sense of smell.

Once the algorithm is stable and the training is completed, it only takes a few seconds for the parasites in the company to be pulled out one after another like grasshoppers threaded together.

They were eradicated in their entirety before they could even call for help.

For other people in the company, this is an extremely shocking deterrent, so shocking that they will never dare to bend the law for personal gain.

So that company began to accelerate the transfer of more power to AI.

The result was as they expected. Every time they delegated power, the company's efficiency would be immediately improved, and internal friction would be visibly reduced.

Since then, as companies have transferred more and more rights to AI and employees have gradually returned to work and technology, office politics no longer have a breeding ground for growth.

In the end, the company seemed to have been replaced by an engine from the next era, just like a car replaced a horse-drawn carriage. Before it had time to react, the company had already run over the corpse of its competitor.

Seeing this, large organizations have no choice but to gradually delegate power to AI and let it lead the distribution.

Of course, many companies and organizations tried to resist this change, but in the subsequent competition, they were without exception suppressed by efficiency.

They are like zombies who still cling to feudal imperial power in the wave of modernization. They either die out inadvertently, or they wait alone in a dark corner for the opportunity of restoration.

Today, more than 90% of the distribution rights have been handed over to AI.

From wages and bonuses to promotion progress, from admission points to relative tax rates, they are all determined by algorithms, and the room for human manipulation is very limited.

Of course, this has also led to a considerable number of humanists objecting to this impersonal distribution method. They believe that AI is essentially enslaving humans.

But even though AI is inferior to humans in a million ways, it has naturally possessed a quality that humans can never match since its birth—

just.

Under the premise that the technical level remains unchanged, fairness is the greatest efficiency.

It is precisely because of this that people with uncanny execution and judgment skills like Bai Tian can accumulate massive performance at a young age and become agency bosses for a time.

It is precisely because of this that Hideo Nakata was able to complete tasks outstandingly time and time again despite the lack of basic social skills. He relied on his pure execution ability to become a respected special agent, and he did not have to look at anyone's face in his life.

It is precisely because of this that Irina, who had no foundation so far after studying abroad, was promoted just by working hard and became an unquestionable rookie in the agency.

As for the short-haired mother Qin Li, as a grade 12 corporate engineer, she has only been doing her job from beginning to end. She has not received any preferential treatment or suffered any discrimination because of her gender or sexual orientation.

Of course, today's AI distribution is still not perfect, and there are still errors.

But one thing is without a doubt -

The world is in the most just era.

As for the 10% of power reserved by humans, most of it is in the hands of agency heads and corporate directors.

That is the core and most important part and should never be let go.

On the other hand, with this distribution revolution, more and more open interfaces are beginning to be opened between organizations to share algorithms, data and resources. Whether it is a company or a country, there is a trend of alliances.

Today, the Eastern Continent Republican Alliance, where Li Qingming is located, is a super alliance composed of nearly two-thirds of the continents. Although the alliance does not have a chairmanship or a capital, judging from the proportion of its top leaders and the regional distribution of central departments, the alliance is the de facto center. Among the super urban agglomerations on the eastern coast, Xinhai City is naturally among them.