Earth Era

Xiao Yun has been thinking like this, and time has passed quietly amidst this constant thinking. One year has passed, two years have passed...

At this moment, Xiao Yun was like a wild man in the mountains, with almost no trace of the civilized era visible on his body. Everyone, including General Emerk, was a little worried about Xiao Yun's situation, but Xiao Yun still stubbornly lived in his own way and never refused to change.

Xiao Yun seemed to have all his energy locked up by a certain obsession. There are only two roads left for Xiao Yun. The first is to break this obsession and gain a new life. The second is to be locked in this obsession for a lifetime and unable to get out of it.

And obviously, this obsession is...to decipher the genius's method of giving robots the ability to evolve themselves.

During this period, all relevant information about the expedition fleet's discoveries and all speculations were sent to the solar system. General Emerk hoped that human civilization could be prepared to face the enemy before the real robot craze arrived. But sending information also takes time. Although human civilization has mastered the method of super-light navigation, it still has not mastered the technology of long-distance communication. At most, it can only transmit signals at twice the speed of light, which is the same as the speed of the spacecraft. In other words, if the expedition fleet sends a message, it will take seventeen years for the solar system to receive it. Including the time it takes for the solar system to reply to the message, it will take more than thirty years for the expedition fleet to receive a reply from the solar system. .

It is obviously unrealistic to expect the Solar System to command the fleet's actions. It is precisely for this reason that General Emerk has great autonomy in fleet command. Otherwise, out of safety considerations, the Solar System should not Agree with General Emerk's plan to assassinate Genius.

But no matter what, the plan to assassinate the genius is finally implemented. Xiao Yun had no way to say that this plan was not good. In fact, if Xiao Yun were in General Emerk's position, Xiao Yun would make the same choice. It's just... Xiao Yun is a scientist, an artificial intelligence expert, not a general.

So Xiao Yun has a different choice than General Emerk. The plan to assassinate the genius is good, but if the basis for making the plan is wrong...what's the use no matter how good the plan is?

There are less than two years left. If Xiao Yun still can't find a way within these two years, the plan to assassinate the genius will be truly implemented.

During the long period of thinking, Xiao Yun had many ideas, but after more careful thinking, Xiao Yun eliminated all these ideas one by one.

The first idea is the natural way of evolution. In other words, these robots evolve according to natural evolution just like natural life. Simply put, the core of this method is natural selection, survival of the fittest.

The primitive life on the earth in ancient times evolved in this way. They did not have their own scientific system, nor did they have a clear independent consciousness. It was the natural environment that helped them complete their evolution. There will always be mutations in the reproduction of living organisms, which will cause the next generation to be slightly different from the mother. And it was the accumulation of these slight differences that eventually allowed them to evolve into complex and more advanced life.

In this model, fragile life forms that do not adapt to the environment will be eliminated and their genes will not be passed down. Strong life forms that adapt to the environment will be retained and their genes will be passed down. Then they will continue to adapt and evolve. , and ultimately achieve the purpose of improving one's own strength.

But after more in-depth thinking, Xiao Yun found that this evolutionary method was not suitable for the evolution of robots. First of all, the natural selection method of evolution is to better adapt to the environment, but it is only limited to adapting to the environment. If these robots adopt this evolutionary method, they should evolve to the environment that is most suitable for the Raqqa planet. Evolution stops.

This is the limitation of natural evolution. A robot is always just a robot. It cannot have independent self-awareness like real life, and... when on earth, life with independent self-awareness is not limited to humans, many biological species have their own Independent consciousness, but their evolution has been limited to the earth.

Even the evolution of human beings has actually been limited to the earth. This is the limitation of the evolutionary method of natural selection. It can make a species more adaptable to the environment, but it cannot make the species better. If you want to leave the earth and enter space, it is basically impossible to rely on natural evolution. You must rely on wisdom to do it.

Secondly, the evolution method of natural selection is inactive. That is to say, there is no way to predict in advance what robots or life forms will evolve into in the future through natural selection. Although there is a very small probability in this universe that there may be life forms that have been evolving and then evolved from the planet to survive in the universe. However, the evolution of this kind of life forms must also follow the slow changes of the environment. In other words In other words, it is still the changes in the environment that created it, rather than its own active choice.

Based on the above two points, Xiao Yun basically ruled out the possibility of these robots relying on natural evolution to improve their strength. This probability is so small that it can be ignored. And the genius who designed these infinitely replicating robots... is obviously very sure that he can make these robots stronger and stronger. This is an irreconcilable problem. contradiction.

Perhaps you can add a restriction to the way of evolution by natural selection, that is, set a clear direction of evolution in the initial program of the robots, and tell them from the beginning that your direction of evolution is space and faster-than-light navigation. Then this involves the second evolutionary method speculated by Xiao Yun, that is, the evolutionary method of infinite trial and error.

The basic idea of ​​this evolutionary method is to rely on the huge number of infinitely replicating robots to let each robot randomly choose a change direction. Because the number of robots is large enough, there are robots in every evolutionary method listed. Go try. When enough different robots are created, these robots will try to enter the universe under the guidance of the evolutionary direction that has been set in advance. Robots with the wrong evolutionary direction will be eliminated by the natural environment. , robots with the correct evolutionary direction will be retained.

One such attempt may involve one trillion robots, and among these trillions of robots, only one robot may happen to choose the right direction of evolution, so it is retained, and the remaining nine thousand nine hundred and ninety All 999,999,999 robots will be damaged and die, but that doesn’t matter. This robot that is lucky enough to be saved will publish various parameters of its body through communication equipment. Then all the remaining robots know this correct way of evolution, and they will choose to evolve according to this correct way of evolution.

Because of the powerful reproduction ability of infinitely replicating robots, the robots lost in previous attempts will be replenished in a short period of time. After reaching a certain number, the second trial and error begins - the robots that were tried in the last attempt may reach The stratosphere, and this time the attempt may be to reach the ionosphere - still adopt the exhaustive method, based on the robots that can already reach the stratosphere, once again try all imaginable evolutionary directions, and once again try and error, the evolutionary direction is wrong The robots will still be eliminated, and the correctly evolved robots will be retained. Then it will publish its own structure information, let all robots evolve in this way, and then replenish the number. After the number reaches a certain level, the third Exhaustive trial and error, and so on. In this way, it can be achieved without relying on independent self-awareness or the evolution of scientific systems.

This method of evolution is improved compared to the method of evolution by natural selection. The improvements mainly lie in two points. The first is that it has grasped the initiative in evolution. The robots began to actively evolve instead of passively adapting to the environment. The second is that they have taken the initiative to evolve. It has a clear evolutionary direction.

There are two key points at the core of this evolutionary method. First, the setting of evolutionary goals, and second, whether the number of robots is sufficient to use the exhaustive method. Regarding the setting of evolutionary goals, Xiao Yun had this idea: How does that genius set evolutionary directions that are beyond the scope of his own knowledge?

To use a very simple analogy, if there is an ape walking on all fours in front of you, as a human being, you will of course know that its next evolutionary direction is to leave the trees, walk upright on the ground, and then use various tools and fire. ...Evolve step by step, but when this ape has evolved into a human like you, how should you guide it to evolve? After all, even you yourself don’t know what the next step in your evolution will be.

In the infinitely replicating robot, the genius is the human in the example, and the robots are the apes. No matter how smart or powerful that genius is, his knowledge cannot be infinite. His plan for the future evolution direction of the robots will always have an end. Once the robots evolve to the end of the plan, they will lose their clear direction of evolution. and evolutionary initiative, what should they do?

There is no doubt that by that time, the evolution of robots will stop, and Xiao Yun believes that such robots are still flawed. If the genius is really talented enough, he will not use this method. (To be continued ~^~)