100: Little Star? A beginner AI?

Apple China Headquarters.

Chelson Abbott sought out Chen Chen immediately after the Red Star press conference for classmate xiao xing ended, wanting to get a few units to take back for testing.

Chen Chen readily agreed to his request. It had been a full ten days since he received the products on the 3rd.

When he first got them, Chelson Abbott had his assistant ask little star some questions in Mandarin with some interest. The answers he received were basically no different from his own Siri, so he didn't take it to heart.

After taking several little star units to the Fruit China research lab for disassembly, the results left him even more disappointed.

This was just a voice assistant masquerading as artificial intelligence. With its crude workmanship, low price, and nonsensical intelligence, little star seemed completely useless to Chelson Abbott, other than its ability to control Red Star's compatible appliances.

Red Star hadn't even integrated it with mobile applications; they didn't even dare to put this voice assistant on a phone, only managing to sell it as a standalone speaker.

At least Siri had basically integrated mobile apps. Given the nature of the android ecosystem, Chelson Abbott was not optimistic about little star's application on mobile phones.

Just as Chelson Abbott was thinking about how to discuss the Yangtze River Battery with Chen Chen in a couple of days, a knock sounded at the door.

"Come in."

Entering was Zheng Shao, an Engineer for Apple China. As a large multinational corporation, Fruit naturally had its own design and research institute in China, mainly to recruit high-level Chinese talent to work for Fruit.

Zheng Shao was holding a little star unit in his hand. Wasn't this the one he had sent over a few days ago?

Why had Zheng Shao brought it back?

Before Chelson Abbott could ask, Zheng Shao spoke up first:

"Abbott, perhaps we should re-examine this speaker from Red Star."

"Just yesterday, Red Star pushed a system update. After the upgrade, little star has shown significant evolution."

"The current little star can not only engage in continuous dialogue within a certain range, but it can even think about logical problems. I now suspect that Red Star, like Google, has its own set of DistBelief, capable of self-summarization and unsupervised feature learning."

"The current little star already possesses the characteristics of a primary AI."

Chelson interrupted Zheng Shao's long string of technical terms directly:

"Zheng, are you saying that Red Star's voice assistant can evolve, perform self-learning, and can even be called an AI?"

"You could say that."

Chelson let out a disdainful laugh. It wasn't that he looked down on Chinese companies; if someone said a Chinese lab or research institute had an artificial intelligence model, he would certainly believe it.

But if you said a private Chinese enterprise had a deep-learning neural network model supporting a voice assistant speaker, Chelson definitely wouldn't believe it.

These were the most advanced technologies in the world; could a company like Red Star really pull it off?

If they could handle all that, wouldn't Fruit be considered useless?

Amazon, Google, and Musk's Tesla were all researching large models, and Fruit naturally was as well. Progress across the board wasn't very ideal; currently, only Amazon had plans to launch its own smart speaker next year.

Chelson wouldn't believe it even if he were beaten to death that a private Chinese company like Red Star could surpass these multinational giants in consumer-grade intelligence.

"Mr. Abbott, let me demonstrate it for you."

Having said that, Zheng Shao prepared to plug in the little star he was holding.

"Zheng, no need, I have one here."

Chelson pulled a little star out from a corner behind him. After his previous experience with it, he had left it in the corner to gather dust.

"Abbott, it's better to use mine. After the pushed update, this speaker has started to recognize voiceprints. I won't be able to operate yours."

"Fine."

After plugging it in and reconnecting to the internet, under Chelson's watchful eye, Zheng Shao asked his first question.

"classmate xiao xing."

"I am here."

"Who are you?"

"I am little star, your voice assistant."

"What are we doing?"

"Hello, we are currently communicating. How can I help you?"

After little star finished answering, the blue light on top remained lit. Chelson watched the dialogue between Zheng Shao and little star with great interest.

A few days ago, when his assistant spoke to this speaker, they had to wake it up every single time and couldn't engage in continuous dialogue. It seemed that quite a lot had indeed been upgraded.

"Yes, then who am I, the one speaking to you?"

Zheng Shao continued to ask.

His question was very abstract. Even the most advanced artificial intelligence today, when faced with this question, would only answer something like 'You are my master' or simply two words—'A human.'

At this moment, both Chelson and Zheng Shao were staring at the classmate xiao xing, whose top was constantly flashing blue light.

They couldn't help but get a certain feeling.

And that was that little star was thinking.

But how was that possible?

It had never been said that any artificial intelligence based on a large model could be associated with 'thinking'.

Two seconds later, little star's emotionless, synthesized electronic voice slowly emanated from the speaker unit.

"You should be a human. Given the current level of technology, there is no AI yet that has evolved to use human language so freely. You can ask me any question, so there is a high probability that you are my master."

As little star's voice trailed off, the blue light at the top also extinguished, indicating that this dialogue had ended. To continue the conversation, it would have to be woken up again to start over.

Chelson stared blankly at the speaker. With his level of Chinese, he couldn't fully understand what little star had just said, but he understood one thing: little star could engage in continuous dialogue and had its own linguistic logic.

"How is this possible!?"

The atmosphere was frozen for nearly half a minute before Chelson snapped out of it in disbelief.

Compared to this foreigner who didn't quite understand Chinese, Zheng Shao, as someone who had participated in large language model research, knew better than Chelson how difficult natural language recognition and Chinese sentence restructuring were.

He even had a chilling illusion that a lifeform was looking at him, trying to understand what he said and answering his questions.

Chelson's shout woke him from his unrealistic thoughts, and he said to Chelson somewhat dryly:

"Mr. Abbott, now you can understand why I said we must take this voice assistant seriously. My question just now is something that is simply impossible for a language model to complete."

Chelson also set aside his contempt for Red Star. He decided to send this speaker back to the USA headquarters as quickly as possible for the experts there to conduct professional testing.

"Zheng, leave little star here. I need to report to headquarters immediately."