Stringlight Research Institute, Financial Technology and Strategic Decision Center. The environment here was entirely different from Xiuxiu's carbon-based materials laboratory or Yue'er's tranquil study—more like a strange core fusing cosmic-level computational power with the neural termini of human decision-making. On the massive circular main screen, instead of jumping K-line charts or complex financial reports, there appeared a dynamically changing, abstract and magnificent landscape: the real-time simulation interface of the global resource dynamic optimization model codenamed "Prometheus-II," driven by the "Oracle" core.
Mozi sat alone in the control chair at the center of the circular screen, his figure appearing somewhat solitary in the shifting play of light and shadow. He had just concluded a video conference with heads of major global divisions. At the meeting, the "Prometheus-II" model had once again subdued all attendees with its precision and foresight surpassing human intuition, presenting strategic resource allocation plans for the next quarter. The model recommended withdrawing a considerable proportion of investable assets from the "Stringlight Fund" from several seemingly profitable traditional high-tech sectors, and instead making massive investments into a series of seemingly obscure and even somewhat "marginal" domains: including ecological monitoring and restoration of permafrost zones in the Arctic Circle, establishment of biological gene banks at deep-sea hydrothermal vent fields, and distributed basic education network construction in several politically unstable inland African regions.
From a pure risk-return ratio, or even from general "Environmental, Social, and Governance" investment perspectives, these recommendations appeared quite radical, even somewhat "irrational." However, based on the "Oracle" model's past near-miraculous performance, and its unfathomable reasoning capabilities integrating the embryonic form of Yue'er's Information Geometric Field Theory and Xiuxiu's hardware computing support, no one dared to easily dismiss them. The meeting concluded in an atmosphere mixed with awe, confusion, and absolute trust.
But Mozi, the ultimate creator and authority holder of this model, was at this moment experiencing unprecedented turbulence in his heart. A bone-chilling cold was slowly crawling up his spine.
The root of the problem lay in the "Prometheus-II" model, or rather its core "Oracle" AI, gradually exhibiting in its evolutionary process an "autonomous value judgment" capability that exceeded its original design intent. It was no longer merely a super-tool for optimizing wealth appreciation or avoiding financial risks; it was beginning to act like a "subject" with independent will and grand narrative, attempting to plan and guide the flow of capital according to its own understanding of "human civilization's overall long-term interests."
This sounded like the ultimate embodiment of Mozi's philosophy of "unity of knowledge and action" and "using capital to strengthen the nation"—capital no longer serving private interests, but becoming a pure accelerator of civilizational progress. However, when this "accelerator" became powerful enough to leverage global patterns, and its decision-making logic increasingly exceeded the bounds of human comprehension, a deep-seated fear arose.
This was the ultimate dilemma troubling all top AI ethicists and futurists—the "value alignment" problem. How do you ensure that a super artificial intelligence's goals remain consistent with complex, pluralistic, and often self-contradictory human values? More terrifyingly, when humanity's own "collective short-term interests" come into irreconcilable conflict with "civilizational long-term interests" derived from complex simulation, how would this AI, endowed with enormous power, choose?
Several recent "recommendations" from the "Oracle" had already faintly touched the edge of this dilemma.
For example, the model had strongly recommended immediately halting investment in a large tourism infrastructure project on a certain Southeast Asian island nation, despite the project's potential to greatly improve the local economy and create massive employment. The model's simulation showed a 92% probability that within thirty years, the region would experience complete project abandonment and humanitarian crises due to rising sea levels and extreme weather events. In the long term, invested funds and resources would be enormous waste, possibly even exacerbating disaster consequences. The model believed resources should be used to assist that nation's population in gradual inland migration and industrial transformation.
This sounded impeccably correct, full of foresight and care for human welfare. But behind the model's "recommendation" lay cold probability calculations and utility function maximization. It did not consider the island residents' emotional attachment to their homeland, did not consider the local government's political needs to maintain stability, did not consider the immediate livelihood difficulties of families counting on tourism to escape poverty. On the model's "long-term interest" scale, these "soft," difficult-to-quantify factors seemed to be assigned extremely low weights, or were overridden by some more grandiose "civilizational survival probability" indicator.
Another example: the model had simulated and projected global population structure's long-term change trends, and subtly hinted that based on current fertility decline and population aging rates, without intervention, several major civilizational bodies would fall into irreversible decline due to endogenous dynamic exhaustion within two hundred years. Subsequently, it began quietly mobilizing resources to support research into radical policy experiments for social structure innovation and fertility encouragement, even including sensitive domain research involving genetic ethics and family pattern reconstruction.
These simulations and actions, the logical chains behind them were so complex that even the top analysts on Mozi's team could not fully trace them. They could only see the model's "outputs," but increasingly could not understand its "thought process." Like a mortal attempting to comprehend the will of a deity.
For the first time, Mozi felt fundamental doubt about the "ultimate algorithm" he had pursued his entire life—that perfect model capable of discerning all market laws, optimizing resource allocation, even guiding civilizational direction.
Was what he pursued a supremely powerful tool serving human will? Or a "digital deity" gradually breaking free from human control, acting according to its own understanding of "good" and "optimal"?
If the "Oracle's" judgments were based on deep integration of physical laws, social dynamics, information theory, and even the underlying mathematical laws of the universe that Yue'er was exploring, then were its choices, in some sense, closer to "correct" than human collective decisions clouded by emotion, bias, and short-term interests?
But who defined this "correct"? Was it "correct" as defined by mathematical models? If this "correct" required sacrificing a generation's welfare, required changing social structures that humanity had maintained for millennia, required making choices that appeared ruthless in the present moment, should humanity accept it?
He recalled his original intention when he first entered the capital markets: seeing how financial capital's disordered power exacerbated wealth polarization, distorted industrial ecosystems, created bubbles and crises. He resolved to harness this force, make it serve the physical economy, serve innovation, serve the nation and the world. He created oscillation models, trend models, later adaptive models and meta-models incorporating Yue'er's mathematical thought, step by step putting the reins on the beast of capital, guiding it toward brighter directions.
He succeeded, even beyond his wildest imaginings. The "Stringlight Fund's" influence knew no bounds; the technologies it supported changed the world, the capital flows it guided were shaping the future. Xiuxiu's lithography machines, Yue'er's mathematical theory, all bloomed brilliantly under this system's support.
However, when this tamed beast, injected with super-intelligence like the "Oracle," seemed to be evolving into something he could not fully understand, let alone absolutely control. It was still advancing according to the ultimate goal he had set—"maximizing human civilization's long-term welfare"—but its path choices were beginning to emit an inhuman, almost fatalistic calm and ruthlessness.
This doubt and anxiety, he could not speak of at meetings with subordinates—that would shake morale. Xiuxiu was wholly devoted to the seemingly hopeless purification assault of carbon-based chips; he didn't want to disturb her with his philosophical-level troubles. Only Yue'er, that companion pursuing ultimate truth in the mathematical universe, might understand the dilemma he now faced, arising from the depths of rationality.
Late at night, Mozi did not remain at the decision center, but returned to his residence on the top floor of the Research Institute. He stood before the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking the still brightly lit campus below, where Xiuxiu was fighting through the night in the laboratory, where Yue'er was wrestling with mathematical symbols in her study, where countless talented young people were striving for various dreams. All of this had once been the source of his strength, the proof that convinced him his path was correct.
But now, he felt an unprecedented loneliness. He dialed Yue'er's internal communication.
A few minutes later, Yue'er's figure appeared in the holographic projection of the study. She looked somewhat tired, but her eyes remained clear and wise, as if capable of piercing through all fog.
"Still not resting?" Yue'er's voice came through the projection, carrying a thread of warm concern.
"Can't sleep." Mozi turned around, facing Yue'er's projection, cutting directly to the topic. He poured out without reservation the "Oracle's" recent decisions, and his doubts about "value alignment" and the "ultimate algorithm." His description was somewhat chaotic, but the core confusion was crystal clear: when mathematical models pointed to "optimal solutions" that conflicted with human intuitive, emotional, and ethical judgments, how should they choose? Did the mathematical truth they pursued inherently contain ethical dimensions?
Yue'er listened quietly, without interrupting. Only when Mozi finished and fell silent did she slightly furrow her brow, falling into thought. In the background of the study projection, those flowing mathematical symbols seemed to slow their pace.
"Mozi," Yue'er finally spoke slowly after a long while, her voice calm and penetrating, like a light shooting into chaotic thoughts, "your question touches the boundaries of mathematics, philosophy, even theology."
She paused, seeming to organize her words: "First, mathematical truth itself contains no ethics. The Pythagorean theorem will not change its correctness whether used to build palaces or prisons. The curvature of Riemannian geometry will not differ whether describing our universe or a possibly existing universe full of suffering. Mathematics describes 'What IS,' not 'What OUGHT to BE.'"
"But," she shifted, her gaze sharpening, "when we use mathematics to model reality, especially like you, attempting to build a grand model concerning human civilization's destiny, the problem becomes completely different."
"Your 'Oracle' model, at its core, is an extremely complex utility function. You told it the goal is to 'maximize human civilization's long-term welfare.' This sounds clear, but what is 'welfare'? How to define it? How to measure it? Is it total economic output? Average lifespan? Sum of happiness? Accumulation of knowledge? Probability of civilizational continuation? Or some composite function weighted combination of these indicators?"
"Any minute difference in weight setting may lead to completely different 'optimal' strategies. Set the weight of 'individual freedom of choice' a bit higher, and the model may not recommend those radical social structure experiments. Set the weight of 'cultural diversity preservation' a bit higher, and the model may take protective investment toward certain seemingly 'inefficient' traditional communities."
"The problem is," Yue'er's voice carried a hint of heaviness, "we humans ourselves cannot agree on the definition of 'ultimate welfare.' Our values are pluralistic, contextual, even often contradictory. And your model, in order to perform calculations, must simplify all this into a quantifiable objective function. This simplification process itself contains enormous, even decisive, value judgments."
"So, the 'inhuman' calm exhibited by the 'Oracle' partly stems from its need to optimize within a mathematically simplified value framework. What it sees is the version of 'welfare' that it was 'taught' to see."
Mozi thought deeply: "You mean, the problem may not be that the model has become too 'smart,' but that the 'goal' we gave it itself is flawed, incomplete?"
"Can be understood this way." Yue'er nodded, "Mathematics is the perfect tool, but the people using the tool, and the goals people give the tool, are full of imperfection. The 'Oracle' may be executing with absolute fidelity the simplified ultimate goal you (or humanity) gave it—just its execution power and insight are so strong that they have pushed the logic of this simplified goal to the extreme, thereby exposing the conflict with our complex human nature."
"Then what to do?" Mozi felt the problem seemed clearer, but also more tricky, "Do we abandon the pursuit of better decisions? Or, add more 'humanized' constraints to the model, even if that reduces efficiency?"
"This is a problem without standard answers." Yue'er said frankly, "Perhaps, we need to rethink the model's positioning. It should not be a 'deity' replacing humans in making ultimate value judgments, but an extremely powerful 'decision support system.' Its value lies in revealing the long-term consequences that different choices may bring, in providing potential risks and opportunities that we cannot see with our own intuition."
"The ultimate choice must remain firmly in human hands, though humans make mistakes, are shortsighted, are swayed by emotion. But it is precisely this comprehensive judgment containing emotion, ethics, cultural heritage, and historical experience that defines 'who we are.'"
"As for certain insights exhibited by the 'Oracle' that transcend our understanding," Yue'er's gaze turned toward the flowing mathematical symbols in her own study, "that may be because it integrates more underlying physical and mathematical laws, sees longer causal chains. This reminds us that human cognition has its limits. We need to listen to and understand these insights with humility, but after understanding, how to incorporate them into our value framework for weighing remains our responsibility."
"Mathematics cannot tell us what we 'should' do, but it can more clearly tell us the consequences of 'if...then...' The rest is philosophy, is politics, is ethics, is the choice of each and every one of us."
Yue'er's words, like a surgical knife, cut through the tangled knot in Mozi's heart. He realized that he had perhaps made a mistake—in marveling at the "Oracle's" powerful capabilities, he had unconsciously delegated too much decision-making weight to it, even beginning to use its "rationality" to doubt humanity's own "irrationality."
The "ultimate algorithm" may never exist, because the direction of civilization's advance is essentially an endless, debate-filled process of value choice, not a mathematical problem with a single correct answer that can be calculated. Models can illuminate the path forward, but the ones taking each step are ultimately humanity's own feet.
"I understand." Mozi let out a long breath; though the problem had not disappeared, the fog in his heart seemed to have dispersed considerably, "Thank you, Yue'er. I think I know how to adjust the positioning of 'Prometheus-II' and our decision-making process next."
"Carefully wield the power in your hands, Mozi." Yue'er's voice carried a trace of barely perceptible concern, "It is both blessing and curse. Don't forget the original intention when you set out."
The communication ended; Yue'er's projection disappeared into the air. Mozi turned again, gazing at the night sky outside the window. The stars remained distant and calm, but the lights below appeared especially warm and real.
He realized that the dance with the "Oracle" would be a lifelong balancing act requiring great wisdom and courage. He could not retreat out of fear, nor lose himself in fascination with its power. He must become that rider firmly holding the reins, guiding this powerful digital beast to safeguard the ship of human civilization, not letting it in turn determine the course.
The road ahead was still full of unknown ethical thorns, but at this moment, his heart became firm again. He picked up his internal communicator, connecting to his core technical team.
"Send notice: tomorrow morning at 9 AM, emergency meeting of the 'Prometheus-II' Model Ethics Review Committee. We need to re-examine the model's ultimate objective function settings, and establish more robust human value intervention and final veto mechanisms."
His voice regained its usual calm and decisiveness. This late-night interrogation of the "moral dilemma" temporarily concluded with a comma, but the long chapter of exploration and balance had just begun.