Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 191 - 191 111 Data Deletion

191: Chapter 111 Data Deletion 191: Chapter 111 Data Deletion Daijiu Tai’a pushed the door open and was greeted by the sight of a Cybernetically Enhanced Person firmly pinned to the ground by a Guardian Warrior.

He couldn’t help but ask, “What’s going on here?”

“Your Excellency, I’m merely controlling this poor fellow to prevent him from doing anything disrespectful,” the warrior expertly immobilized the limbs of the Cybernetically Enhanced Person while pressing down hard on his neck.

Fortunately, Cybernetically Enhanced People with fully upgraded prosthetic bodies don’t have to worry much about breathing.

The Cybernetically Enhanced Person saw Daijiu Tai’a and called out, “Your Excellency, it’s me…”

“Ah, I recognize this voice.

Are you Mr.

Ming Jing?

You’re not dead yet?” Daijiu Tai’a nodded.

He did remember such a person.

He used to be Ya Pining Zhao’s Secretary Officer, and after Ya Pining Zhao sought asylum with the Mona Knight Order, this guy was also temporarily dispatched to assist Bengel with his work.

And now, both Ya Pining and Bengel were dead.

Yet this person was still alive.

Daijiu Tai’a crouched down and said, “Last night was truly chaotic; I thought you might have been one of the casualties.”

“Well…

I actually escaped early,” Mr.

Ming Jing said: “My mind went blank when the Young Master’s Biological Brain was destroyed, and then I fled…

I heard Mr.

Bengel also passed away…

It’s really good that you’re safe.”

As he spoke, the tone was quite sheepish.

— You’re indeed quite fortunate.

Daijiu Tai’a added in his mind.

If the Personality Mask of “Six Dragons Sect Emissary” and the conversation with “that Hero” had been overheard, then his Personality Mask would definitely do everything possible to kill this person.

“It’s good that you’re not dead.

Congrats,” Daijiu Tai’a nodded, then turned to the warrior restraining Ming Jing: “Why are you treating him like this?

I know this man; he is a man of integrity within our guard forces, a faithful comrade-in-arms.”

The warrior spoke with disdain: “He attempted to make unreasonable requests to the Commander Excellency and the Chief Excellency and wouldn’t be dissuaded.

Guarding the venue is my duty.”

Daijiu Tai’a looked towards the conference room, ensured that Ashur and Amilcare had left, and then said, “The talks inside have ended now; let him go.”

The warrior nodded reluctantly, releasing his grip, but still remarked, “Your Excellency, you need to believe me, this man is essentially a scoundrel.

He suddenly lost his prospects and sought to compensate for them in an unreasonable way.

People like him…”

Daijiu Tai’a shook his head, cutting off the guard’s remarks, and asked, “What do you want to do?”

“The Young Master’s Biological Brain has been damaged.

But he was assisting the Mona Knight Order with the Personality Mask experiment.

We have his memory backup!” Mr.

Ming Jing exclaimed, “If we extract these memory backups and overwrite them onto a blank cloned Biological Brain while pasting, trimming, and splicing reactions from different Pseudo-personality Masks, we can surely restore Ya Pining Zhao’s personality…”

Daijiu Tai’a sighed, “Do you realize what you’re saying?”

Mr.

Ming Jing wanted to say something, but the synthesizer only emitted incomprehensible white noise.

Daijiu Tai’a shook his head, “Your loyalty is indeed very touching.

But it’s meaningless.”

“The Young Master can still live as a person.

The conversion from a Pseudo-personality Mask to a True Personality Mask isn’t unheard of…”

“Indeed, but have you considered where the successful examples came from?” Daijiu Tai’a asked.

“That…”

Mr.

Ming Jing actually knew.

His Young Master could never be compared to “legend,” right?

Even though he was a Protector, noble and powerful, he could never become part of “mythical tales.”

“Moreover, even if you did succeed, it would be meaningless,” Daijiu Tai’a explained patiently, “Suppose there exists a cloned blank brain that is directly loaded with all my memories and shares completely identical judgments and opinions with me on most issues—legally, he is an entirely separate individual and wouldn’t be regarded as ‘me’.

He wouldn’t be able to lay claim to my private property or inherit my position.

And if he wanted to gain my social relationships, that would have to be achieved through ‘deception’.”

“Your Young Master, however, clearly died as recorded.

He can’t deceive anyone.

So even if you were successful, he could only live on as ‘a civilian with the memories of a Protector’.”

“But…

but…” Mr.

Ming Jing became somewhat incoherent: “They plan to delete the Young Master’s Pseudo-personality Mask data!”

“Oh,” Daijiu Tai’a nodded, not particularly surprised: “That’s a fairly normal procedure.

I remember you were Ya Pining Young Master’s Secretary Officer?

Didn’t the Scientific Knights show you the relevant clauses when you got involved in the experiment?

Even if Ya Pining Young Master didn’t want to look, as Secretary Officer, it was your duty to do so.”

The Secretary Officer nodded, “I did read it…”

“Then you should know that there is a clause in there to protect the volunteers— ‘Without authorization from the source of information consciousness, Pseudo-personality Mask code can’t be used’.

According to this clause, all experiments must be halted after Ya Pining Young Master’s death, as the relevant authorization could never be obtained.”

Ya Pining’s Pseudo-personality Mask would be deleted, leaving only experimental records with statistical significance.

This is a normal process.

“I know.

But generally, nobody really takes it seriously, do they?” The Secretary Officer said, “The contents of that hard drive, they truly belong to the young master, right?

The same thoughts, the same judgments…”

“Correct.

But ‘being capable of making the same judgment’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘being a person,'” Daijiu Tai’a shrugged.

“Regrettably, the current mainstream thought is that one should not grant rights to ‘pseudo-personality masks.’ Otherwise, we would have to treat the majority of intelligent devices capable of running the most basic version of personality masks as ‘individuals with human rights.’

This is actually an ethical issue.

The Scientific Knight Order doesn’t pay much attention to this, but it’s taken very seriously in the Jianghu.

The heroes of the Jianghu often have public debates in anonymous forums, arguing over whether ‘pseudo-personality masks’ should be granted rights.

The criteria for ‘pseudo-personality masks’ are quite simple.

As long as an intelligent program can mimic a specific individual and fool everyone familiar with that person without being detected, then it can be considered that person’s ‘pseudo-personality mask.’

In essence, ‘pseudo-personality masks’ are a very broad concept.

Their definition is similar to the ‘Turing Test,’ both being ambiguous at the margins.

The initially created pseudo-personality masks were specifically ‘human thought processes simulated by computational neural signals.’

However, as the concept evolved, even ‘a chat AI with a massive database’ came to be categorized under ‘pseudo-personality masks.’

It is said that the concept originated from a marginal project in the old times, a playful creation by a magnate.

But two hundred years ago, it stirred the whole world in the wake of a historical event.

Since then, debating whether ‘pseudo-personality masks should be granted the rights of natural persons’ has become an eternal topic within the Jianghu.

However, this reality also made many realize something.

Human ‘self-consciousness,’ which we take pride in, isn’t that remarkable after all.

Or to put it another way, ‘self-consciousness’ is essentially chat software, designed to navigate language and improve information flow within a community.

It’s not much different from a chat AI.

Therefore, if one were to really grant natural person rights to pseudo-personality masks, by extension, it would mean ‘a significant portion of modern intelligent devices should be endowed with natural person rights.’

After all, a computer that ‘has not awakened a self’ might just be one that ‘has not yet installed an advanced chat AI.’

This is utterly absurd.

While this might sound somewhat frightening, this is the reality — nowadays, the realm of ‘natural person rights’ is focused on the ‘biological brain’ rather than on ‘self-consciousness.’

Both ‘biological brain’ and ‘self-consciousness’ are ‘necessary but not sufficient conditions’ to possess the rights of a natural person.

A pseudo-personality mask with self-consciousness but no biological brain is not entitled to natural person rights.

Similarly, a cloned blank biological brain is not regarded as a person due to the absence of consciousness.

And the Scientific Knight Order agrees with this view.

It’s rather remarkable.

The Scientific Knight Order and the people of Jianghu effectively form a unity at the academic level.

When exploring pure theory or pure engineering applications, the Jianghu people often cite the achievements of the Scientific Knights.

In the acknowledgments section, some even list the names of Scientific Knights with a mocking tone.

Occasionally, the Scientific Knights also make use of the achievements published by the Jianghu people — of course, at such times, they’d typically say ‘based on a piece of information from the internet’ or ‘there’s a viewpoint on the internet.’

The Scientific Knights don’t consider this an infringement.

After all, the heroes often publish their findings anonymously.

And the heroes don’t see anything wrong with it either.

Their academic interactions with the Scientific Knights usually follow a ‘storm in, snatch the paper, storm out’ process.

It’s for this reason that discussions on the ethics of ‘pseudo-personality masks’ in the Jianghu have also influenced the internal discourse of the Scientific Knight Order.

In everyone’s eyes, the pseudo-personality mask data of Ya Pining Zhao is not considered a person.

“But…

But…”

“There’s no use in ‘buts,’ my poor friend,” sighed Daijiu Tai’a.

“This matter isn’t as ceremonious as you imagine.

It’s just about deleting a few files, which might be the result of a thought, a command.

Those with a strong sense of ceremony might at most provide you with a keyboard to press a key — and this process could even be carried out by a knight apprentice.”

“So, the data you came here to defend, in the time you’ve spent seeking justice, has probably already been deleted.”