What It's Like Being a Vampire

Xiang Kun was currently sitting in front of a dining table that had been cleared, contemplating a platter of rabbit meat while recalling the emotions Tang Baona had felt during her meal.

Xiang Kun has always speculated about how to transform the emotions of others gathered through “Emotional Infusion” into his own feelings that could be utilized through “Emotional Assimilation”.

His theory involved capturing the emotional states of others and then physically “imagining” and “reconstructing” these emotions to make them his own.

However, at this moment, as he sat at the table looking at the rabbit meat, he could recall how Tang Baona reacted to the food that was meticulously prepared to her taste with a mix of joy, pleasure, and a hint of excitement, and the satisfaction after tasting delectable food.

However, Xiang Kun found it relatively easy to “imagine” and “reconstruct” these feelings in real-time when he senses Tang Baona’s emotions during meals with the help of chopsticks. But at the moment, he was finding it a bit difficult.

After all, although his sense of taste was still there, more keen now than before, he had lost any appetite for regular food. It was indeed challenging to construct and tap into the scenario of being immersed in good food through his memories.

Nevertheless, it makes sense. If recalling Tang Baona’s emotions could be of help, then he could have directly recalled his feelings when tasting delicious food in the past.

But when he’s dining with others, if he proceeds with the “reconstruction” directly, he’s afraid he might actually “hypnotize” himself, become engrossed in the emotions, and start gorging on the food. If he ate too much and the two stones in his stomach couldn’t hold back, he might end up throwing up on the table, which would be… indescribable.

However, now that the chopsticks had been given to Tang Baona, he could simply sense it around mealtime, then casually prepare some food on his end, and “imagine” and “experience” it.

But wouldn’t it be difficult for Tang Baona to get a better experience than eating the food he made, even if she ate elsewhere, even in a high-end restaurant?

Moreover, Xiang Kun always felt that Tang Baona, although very emotional while eating, similar to her personality, carried a hint of restraint, lacking a certain “explosiveness”.

If the emotions could become more “explosive” and intense, perhaps Xiang Kun might be able to better empathize when he senses the excitement?

But aside from his parents, Tang Baona has been the person he successfully understood the most in terms of tastes. As for his parents’ emotions, it’s likely to be more restrained than Tang Baona’s.

Who else around him would be suitable to concert the emotion of desire for food, and “hunger”?

Suddenly Xiang Kun thought of his previous neighbor, the little fat girl Liu Shiling, who, when tasting appetizing delicacies, just never seemed to get enough, not even her own tongue and dish left off her list.

As soon as he thought of the Little Fat Girl, Xiang Kun subconsciously sensed the coin and the A4 sheet of paper he had given her, then he froze.

The sensitivity of the coin had noticeably decreased again! The reduction on the A4 paper was less, but the difference was still noticeable.

It seems that once he’s done with the project with Director Lin and Zhang Qian, he’ll have to take another trip to Star City to see the little fat girl again.

What’s so special about this girl?

Why was it that the “super sensory contact” he established with others did not decrease in sensitivity, but only the two items associated with her dropped so much?

…

In the following “blood-drinking period”, Xiang Kun continued to work on his project in seclusion.

In this collaborative project with Director Lin and Zhang Qian’s company, Xiang Kun was essentially playing roles such as a half-product manager, a half-project manager, an architect, chief engineer, interaction designer…

Based on the requirements provided earlier, he designed the entire project structure and was personally responsible for coding several core modules. Depending on different needs for other modules, he either provided implementation methods, solution strategies, or designed different strategies and developed unified standards.

He created wireframes for all interfaces, determined the UI elements and layout in all key interfaces.

Then, based on what he had done and arranged, he informed his “old pal” Ma Hongguo, who’s currently recruiting in Pengcheng, via QQ about the direction of team building, the standards for recruitment, which positions to recruit, what kind of people are needed, and what skills are required, and so on.

Once this project is completed, Xiang Kun does not plan to continue making money from them, but to have the team built by Ma Hongguo take over future maintenance, expansion, and iterations. He wanted to gradually step back – as he was remote and only had five days a week of time.

However, Xiang Kun did not reveal to Ma Hongguo or Director Lin what he had specifically done up to now, because for them, this pace was a bit inconceivable. Moreover, since Ma Hongguo’s team was not yet fully assembled, even if he handed over these elements to him, it would not speed up the completion of the project.

Xiang Kun had the perfect opportunity to utilize the funding provided and experiment with his “AI Assistant Project”.

After signing the contract, Director Lin had sent an advance payment of 200,000 Yuan to Xiang Kun. Moreover, if he made any purchases for the project, he could apply for reimbursement by providing the original receipts.

In reality, this project bore no relevance with Xiang Kun’s “AI Assistant Plan”, but similarly to many NBA players who engage boxing coaches to train during the offseason, to hone things like their reflexes, Xiang Kun was also aiming to seek inspiration through this project while making money and to see if any new ideas would emerge.

That’s why Xiang Kun even wrote the implementation of several core functionalities using inline assembly in the core code region.

The CPU can only recognize binary instructions of 0 and 1, and assembly language is the low-level language closest to machine language. When hardware performance was initially poor, the purpose of developing in assembly language was to enhance the performance and responsiveness of the program. But now that hardware devices are developing rapidly, and compiler optimization has improved significantly, hand-written assembly language might not necessarily be more efficient. On the contrary, due to its complexity, difficulty to read, and volume, the subsequent maintenance difficulties it brings far outweigh the minor performance increase it provides.

In fact, in most cases, if you’re seeking performance, using C++ is sufficient, and using C is relatively rare. Besides a few scenarios like embedded development, most developers don’t need to directly use assembly language for development.

But Xiang Kun is actively ‘making trouble for himself’, because he undertakes this project aiming to pave the way for his “AI Assistant Project”.

Since assembly language is closest to machine language and is easier for the CPU to understand, Xiang Kun wants to ‘step into’ the computer’s thinking mode through coding and reasoning this small part of the code, hoping to find a breakthrough from current AI implementation methods.

Moreover, in some cases, assembly language has more flexibility compared to other high-level languages.

He even handwrote the X86 version of the code for that small part of the core module after he completed the assembly code under the ARM.

But while the project is progressing rapidly, no hint of inspiration for his “AI Assistant” has arrived yet.

Xiang Kun is now ambitious and greedy. He really doesn’t want to create a simple “Silly AI”, he wants to create a “Super AI”.

Here’s a simple metaphor:

A young man named Xiao Ming has a flock of birds, which are very obedient under his training.

Boss Wang is not satisfied with his neighbor, Miss Yang, so he seeks help from Xiao Min, the bird keeper.

Boss Wang: “Help me get back at her.” – This is demand from the client.

Xiao Ming: “Let’s have the birds fly over Miss Yang’s house, forming an S from time to time, and a B at other times, what do you think?” – This is the project talk.

Boss Wang: “Sounds good, let’s do that.”

If you consider the flock of birds as a “computer”, then Xiao Ming is the “programmer” or “developer”.

And this training process can be seen as the coding process.

The “machine languages” birds can understand are: being fed, not being fed.

All the other content is trained based on this foundation.

“Letting the flock of birds fly over Miss Yang’s house, forming an S then a B.” – This is the specific requirement.

Xiao Ming thinks: “I’ll first guide several leading birds, then the rest will naturally catch up. If I repeat this, they can form the shape I want.” – This is the algorithm.

“I won’t feed them until they reach the correct position, but once they do, I’ll feed them.” – This is the function.

No matter how well Xiao Ming trains these birds, even if he can command them to form S and B with a whistle and they seem to understand humans, in essence, what they can understand remains:

Being fed, not being fed.

So, the existence of a Super AI is like making the flock of birds directly understand: “I want you to fly over Miss Yang’s house, forming an S then a B.”

Even a step further, it could understand: “Help me take revenge on her.”

By then, Boss Wang can communicate directly with the flock of birds, Xiao Ming can sod off, or focus on feeding the birds, and making them comfortable.

What Xiang Kun wants to do now is to start training a bird from scratch, grant it the power of a Bird King, and then make it understand his words – a real understanding!

By then, whatever needed to be done, just tell Bird King, and Bird King could lead a flock of ordinary birds to do the job spontaneously. As for how to get it done, Xiang Kun doesn’t need to worry or even know about it.

If the training went well, not to mention forming an S or B, even if Bird King could lead the flock of birds to perform a Pure Land of Bliss dance, it might even anticipate your wishes, and sing you a resounding song.

You say: “I want to take revenge on Miss Yang.”

It might respond proactively: “Shall I lead my brothers to drop poop over Miss Yang’s house? If not, we could peck at her windows at night, or fly in a formation above her house, forming an S or B.”

Of course, there’s a high probability it might just take the bird feed you handed out and share it with other birds, then lazily bask in the sun without doing much. Or it might even poop on your head, saying it wasn’t intentional, you were just selected randomly.