prynovel Chapter 72 The AI is asking why
Chapter 72 The AI is asking why
The morning agenda consisted of presentations by scholars from various fields. The content was fairly standard, nothing more than repetitive topics within the academic community such as large models, multimodality, and interpretability.
Lin Yu leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Wang Lei sat next to him, taking notes. After writing two pages, he realized he was drawing stick figures and gave up.
During the lunch break, something happened.
Lin Yu walked out of the venue, intending to find a cafeteria to eat noodles. Just as he reached the corner of the corridor, a voice came from behind him.
"Forest."
English, standard pronunciation, clean voice.
Lin Yu stopped and turned around.
Kevin Sterling stood three meters away. Up close, he looked younger and more energetic than in the photos. His blue eyes were bright, as if they were illuminated.
There were no translators, no assistants, and no reporters.
He was all alone.
"We meet again."
Kevin spoke in Chinese. His pronunciation wasn't perfect, but it was understandable.
"You speak Chinese now?"
"I've been studying for three months. All for today."
Kevin chuckled and switched back to English, "But for complicated things, we still have to use English."
Lin Yu leaned against the wall, looking at him.
"What do you want?"
"Let's chat."
Kevin took two steps closer. "I've been wanting to talk to you since Chicago. I just haven't had the chance."
"You can send an email."
"Emails have no eyes."
Kevin said, "I like to look people in the eye when they talk. You can see a lot from it."
Lin Yu's lips twitched slightly.
"for example?"
"For example, you're much more relaxed now than you were in Chicago."
Kevin tilted his head. "That means you've been doing something that makes you happy lately."
Lin Yu did not respond.
Kevin didn't seem to care. He glanced at both ends of the corridor to make sure no one was there, then lowered his voice by half an octave.
"I came to Beijing not just for the forum."
"I know."
"You know why I came."
"You want to see for yourself what I'm doing."
Lin Yu's tone was as if he were asking what dishes were served in the cafeteria today.
Kevin was silent for two seconds. Then he smiled, a genuine smile.
"You really are just like the legends say."
"legend?"
"People at MIT say you're like a wall. No matter how you push, it won't budge."
Kevin shrugged. "Now I feel like it's not a wall. It's a mirror. Whatever you throw at it, it reflects back."
"Are you here to flatter me?"
"I'm here to collaborate."
The corridor fell silent for a moment.
Lin Yu looked into Kevin's eyes. They were blue and very clear, like the icy lakes of Northern Europe.
But something is moving beneath the frozen lake.
"What kind of cooperation?"
"AI".
Kevin stated directly, "You're working on AI, and so am I. Our directions are different, but the underlying logic overlaps. If we share some training methodologies..."
"No."
Kevin's words were cut off.
Why?
"Because what you mean by sharing is that you give me 20% and take 80% away."
Lin Yu's voice was calm. "The AI you're working on at MIT is not the same thing as what I'm doing. You know that, and I know that too. You're coming to me for collaboration because your path is stuck, and you want to see what my path looks like."
Kevin's smile remained unchanged.
But his eyes changed.
The temperature on the surface of the frozen lake dropped a few degrees.
"Are you always like this?" he asked.
"What?"
Treat everyone as an opponent.
Not everyone.
Lin Yu straightened up from the wall. "It's just you."
He walked past Kevin and headed towards the elevator.
"Forest."
Kevin called to him from behind.
Lin Yu didn't stop.
"You took on a job for the military, right?"
Lin Yu paused for a moment.
It was very short. Less than 0.3 seconds. But Kevin saw it.
"Just a guess."
Kevin shrugged. "You haven't published any papers or participated in any academic activities in the last three months, and you've handed over the company's business projects to someone else. There's only one possibility for someone like you to suddenly disappear for three months: you're doing something shady."
He paused for a moment.
"In China, only the military can make a person disappear completely for three months."
Lin Yu did not turn his head.
"Kevin."
"Um?"
"Your Chinese is quite good. But there's one sentence you might not have learned."
Which sentence?
"Don't let your cleverness backfire."
Lin Yu stepped into the elevator, and the doors closed.
Kevin stood in the hallway, staring at the closed elevator doors.
He took out his phone and sent an encrypted message to Boston.
[It's confirmed. He's working on AI, and much deeper than we thought.]
[Also, that draft framework might have problems. He was too calm. A person who's had something stolen from them wouldn't be this calm.]
Unless, he wants us to steal it.
After sending the message, Kevin put his phone away and glanced at the floor numbers flashing above the elevator.
A smile curved his lips.
"interesting."
He said softly, "That's really interesting."
At the same time, at the Loongson base main control center.
Xia Zijing sat alone at the control panel, staring at the screen.
The AI is processing a new batch of training data. This data was personally selected by Lin Yu before he left; it wasn't images or videos, but a set of dialogue records.
Ordinary people's everyday conversations. There are arguments, apologies, lies, and jokes.
The task is simple: determine the speaker's emotion in each dialogue.
The AI's output in the first few rounds was within the expected range. It became increasingly accurate in judging anger, happiness, and tension.
4:33 PM.
A new conversation was presented to the AI.
The dialogue consists of only two sentences.
A: I'm fine.
B: Are you sure?
A: Confirmed.
The standard answer is that person A is lying.
But Lin Yu deleted the standard answer.
The AI fell silent.
The response time jumped from milliseconds to seconds.
Three seconds. Seven seconds. Fifteen seconds.
Xia Zijing's fingers hovered above the keyboard, not falling.
Twenty-three seconds.
A line of text popped up on the screen.
[There is a semantic discrepancy between "I'm fine" and the contextual sentiment model. Often, when an individual needs to actively declare that their state is normal, it actually indicates that their state may be abnormal.]
But I can't be sure.
Why do humans say things that contradict their own state of mind?
Xia Zijing's breath hitched.
The last line.
It asked why.
She picked up her phone and sent a message to Lin Yu.
There are only three words.
It asked.
When Lin Yu saw the news in the back row of the forum, someone was on stage talking about the balance between the emergent ability and controllability of large models.
He glanced at those four words for three seconds.
Then he stood up, grabbed his coat, and left.
Before Wang Lei could react, Lin Yu had already reached the door.
"Boss? You're not attending the roundtable forum this afternoon? You're the keynote speaker."
"Help me ask for leave."
"What's the reason?"
"Have loose bowels."
Lin Yu left the venue, hailed a car, and headed straight for the base.
Forty minutes later, he pushed open the door to the main control center.
Xia Zijing was still sitting at the control panel. The screen was still on, and the text was still lit up.
Why do humans say things that contradict their own state of mind?
Lin Yu stood in front of the screen and stared at it for a long time.
Zhou Weiguo arrived at some point and stood three meters away, silently watching the scene unfold.