Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 567 - 221 The Creator’s Soul

Chapter 567: Chapter 221 The Creator’s Soul

"You can make a profit, but I never lose," Xiang Shan nodded, "And this piece of music did indeed make me a fortune. Old Di is not a scientific researcher, so he’s only talking about the surface."

Dibona shrugged and said with a smile, "That’s true. Why don’t you explain a bit more, boss?"

"Creating an AI that imitates Mr. Kawai Kenji is actually not difficult," Xiang Shan explained: "Those one hundred music critics weren’t just used to train the composition AI. They also evaluated the outputs of the composition AI and wrote comments like ’this part of the piece doesn’t resemble Mr. Kawai Kenji.’ These evaluations were also recorded—guess why?"

Old Di nodded and adopted the stance of a straight man in a comedy duo: "Also... to train the AI, right?"

"Bingo! Besides, I simultaneously trained a batch of music critic AIs. Of course, these AIs’ perspectives are not as diverse as humans—who can evaluate a song from dimensions such as ’style,’ ’innovation,’ ’experimentality,’ ’ideological content,’ ’emotional resonance,’ and so on. Their only angle of evaluation is ’does it resemble Kawai Kenji or not’."

"Each music critic AI would only get data from a random selection of sixty out of those one hundred critics. Only one group could access the evaluation data from all one hundred music critics. Another group would only receive evaluation data from other music critic AIs."

"Anyway, by the second phase of the project, these AIs would be split into a separate mirror group on another supercomputer, forming a closed loop—AI creation, AI evaluation, AI providing feedback to AI."

"The two types of AIs giving feedback to each other, sharpening one another, ultimately reach higher levels."

Lu Xuanyu was somewhat stunned, "Can I ask... what the result was?"

"As a Natural Person, as long as you’re familiar with Mr. Kawai’s works to a certain extent, you would scarcely distinguish the AI’s output from Mr. Kawai’s own music—unless you remember all of Mr. Kawai’s pieces," Xiang Shan pushed up his smart glasses, looking quite pleased. "On the other hand, those critics not familiar enough with Mr. Kawai’s music could, in part, distinguish the AI-produced music. For example... uh, those AIs are too fond of using white noise elements, but at present, no human musician has blended this element so harmoniously into their music."

Zhu Xinyu facepalmed, "Ah—this is entirely a problem of the database you provided. Those AIs simply can’t understand that ’white noise and orchestral music are two different sounds to humans.’

"There are similar issues, but in summary, if you judge from the angle of ’does it resemble Mr. Kawai,’ there’s a high probability of being misled. But if you break out of this mental stereotype and first judge from the perspective of ’is it human or not,’ there might be some findings."

Lu Xuanyu was a bit dizzy, "This... Mr. Kawai is also ’human,’ I mean, he falls under the category of ’human musicians,’ right?"

"Humans’ judgments of ’whether it’s human or not’ are ambiguous. If your brain is focused on determining ’whether this music conforms to Kawai Kenji’s style,’ then even ’the use of white noise’ might be perceived by your brain as a creative attempt by Mr. Kawai—and since that white noise is integrated into the music as an element, it’s subtle! Stop emphasizing it!"

The last sentence was Xiang Shan turning his head to speak to Zhu Xinyu behind him.

Lu Xuanyu nodded, "So where exactly is the profit in this research?"

"In the end, we inspected the machine’s code, trying to find the parameter that ’makes people think the music has Kawai Kenji’s personal style.’ This parameter is what’s called the ’authorial essence,’ I suppose. There’s also the parameter of ’how to judge whether music resembles Kawai Kenji’s personal style,’" Xiang Shan explained, "Since last century, humans have been trying to establish ’a computer’s method of understanding the world’ from scratch in order to, in turn, study ’the pathways of human perception of the world.’

"And one particularly important yet ambiguous direction is ’how humans recognize other humans.’ After all, people are the sum total of all social relations. Why do humans perceive other people to have ’individuality’? And in what way does this ’individuality’ exist?"

"I have a friend who believes that the data determining human individuality is actually quite small. The vast data in human consciousness is mostly ’commonality.’ If compressed using an appropriate format... Oops, sorry, I got carried away."

Lu Xuanyu nodded with respect, "It sounds like very significant research."

"Actually, I’ve started another project too. You know the promotional materials on the streets of Tokyo? Including the theme events at Sky Tower, the huge advertisements on Shibuya streets, and the graffiti on hundreds of street promotion vehicles." Xiang Shan said, "The name ’Number One Martial Arts Tournament’ comes from ’Dragon Ball,’ the most popular manga of the last century."

Lu Xuanyu had a vague premonition, "Boss, you’re not saying..."

"Ah, that’s right. I’ve also trained an AI that imitates ’Dragon Ball’ author Akira Toriyama," Xiang Shan nodded with a smile. "Since graphic recognition by computers is a challenge, I actually intended to have Mr. Toriyama draw himself. But a friend of mine stopped me saying, ’Old Bird is already in his nineties, don’t bother him. If you’re going to do it, do it properly.’ So I bit the bullet and went for it—although it was easier than I thought. The Japanese had trained AIs to emulate the ’god of manga,’ Osamu Tezuka, decades ago. We started a collaboration to get their research experience; then we gathered manga artists who had been assistants to Mr. Toriyama and old artists from the ’Dragon Ball’ animation production team..."

Old Di added, "’Dragon Ball’ was an important part of world pop culture at the turn of the century, receiving extensive attention. This move is quite eye-catching. Additionally, according to publicly released reports, this research is of great importance to how people with long-term blindness regain sight and helps patients with dyslexia, dysgraphia, certain types of aphasia, agnosia, and other cognitive impairments."

Lu Xuanyu nodded, "That’s really... amazing."

Because of past experiences, he held immense respect for such medical applications of research.

"Well, besides those, we, of course, also gained the parameter of ’why Akira Toriyama is Akira Toriyama,’" Xiang Shan nodded. "Lu, we’ve talked about this during your surgery therapy sessions, about ’what is Jeet Kune Do’ and ’what is Bruce Lee’s personal style.’ If you want to know the answer to that, I can also help you inquire—using AI to ask the heavens."

Lu Xuanyu pondered for a moment, then shook his head, "Actually, there’s no need."

"My teacher once told me that Jeet Kune Do isn’t just about technique. We should be more concerned with how Martial Arts influence our thoughts and lifestyle."