Chapter 243: Chapter 243: William's AI Sunday
Hearing the mechanical voice of the intelligent system, William frowned and said, "Retrieve professional male voiceovers from the internet for me to listen to. I want a voice that is resonant, deep, and slightly low."
"Understood, Sir," a few seconds later, the sound system played the intelligent butler reading today's news. It seemed the system had a high level of intelligence, with basic logical capabilities to choose today's news to read to William.
After listening to a few voices, William finally chose one that sounded somewhat like his grandfather Henry's voice. "Alright, this voice will do. As for your name," William pondered for a moment. This system was modified based on Marvel's Friday, with its autonomous thinking ability deleted and limited freedom set by William. "You are my assistant butler, so I'll call you Sunday."
"Alright, Sir. Sunday reporting for duty, ready for your commands," the AI responded.
"Retrieve base commands, test system status, and evaluate processing speed."
"Command accepted. Initiating diagnostics. Diagnostics in progress," after a few seconds, Sunday reported, "Sir, base commands are normal. System is functioning properly. Processing speed is extremely low. Current processors can only meet 3% of processing requirements."
"Only 3%?" William was shocked. The $30 million worth of processors could only satisfy 3% of Sunday's processing needs. That meant to fully utilize Sunday's processing power, he would need to spend $1 billion on processors. And this was just the prototype system. A mature system would require hardware that was ten times more powerful. If he granted Sunday full learning capabilities, it would need to be multiplied by ten again.
$100 billion. William's forehead started to sweat. Even if he went bankrupt, he couldn't afford that. But then he thought, this was only the year 2000. Hardware performance was much lower compared to ten years later. According to Moore's Law, hardware capabilities would double every 18 months. In 15 years, hardware performance would improve by 1024 times.
Forget it, he would take it slow. Right now, $1 billion was too much, let alone $100 billion. He didn't need Sunday's full processing power immediately. In a year or two, the cost might drop to $500 million.
Moreover, there were companies that rented out processing resources. Even if he was concerned about security, William had other solutions. Most computers of this era used less than 50% of their processing resources most of the time. William chuckled and said, "Sunday, can you find out how many idle servers there are in Oxford?"
"Please wait, Sir," a minute later, Sunday replied, "Sir, there are two supercomputers in Oxford, located at Oxford University. There are 647 enterprise-grade servers and 34,713 home computers."
These numbers made William smile. "Exclude the commonly used servers and supercomputers. What is the probability of being detected if you borrow the processing resources of the remaining servers? How much of your functional requirements can be met by borrowing those resources?"
"Calculating," ten seconds later, Sunday replied, "Borrowing idle processing resources has a 0.01% probability of detection. If I only borrow 20% of idle processing resources, the probability of detection is zero, meeting 11% of my processing needs."
This percentage was a bit low. But William understood, as he had excluded commonly used servers, supercomputers, and most enterprise-grade servers. This 11% primarily came from home computers.
"Sir, I must remind you that this 11% increase assumes all computers are turned on."
Damn, he forgot about that. Home and small business computers weren't always on. "What is the probability of being discovered if you borrow the two supercomputers at Oxford University?"
"100%, Sir," Sunday replied.
"Why?" William asked in surprise.
"Sir, borrowing processing power requires a significant amount of electricity. If consumption exceeds 10%, although the supercomputer system might only have a 0.1% chance of detecting me, repeated borrowings will inevitably arouse suspicion, leading to a 100% chance of discovery."
William nodded. It seemed he had been naive. People weren't fools; a sudden surge in electricity consumption would definitely raise suspicions. This method couldn't be used frequently, perhaps not even more than once.
Abandoning the idea of borrowing processing resources, William said, "Help me search online for information on England Electric and Aston Martin."
"Understood, Sir. Do you permit me to access some confidential information?"
"Yes, but only if it poses no threat to the other party and won't be detected," William added, "Also, add a command: in all future online activities, ensure your own safety and do not engage in any destructive behavior without my order."
"Command accepted. Executing. Sir, because of the no-threat and confidential access requirements, the time needed will increase tenfold. Please be patient."
Watching the progress bar on the monitor, Sunday estimated the task would take over an hour. William sat in his chair, looking around the basement servers, feeling the gradually warming air. Clearly, he had more work to do.
He stood up, opened a portal, and tossed all the packaging and trash into an abandoned mine. Before leaving, he used a fire spell to burn the packaging and garbage to ashes.
Returning to the basement, he called the Oxford electric company to send someone to discuss increasing the circuit capacity and electricity usage for his castle. He needed to upgrade the castle's electrical system. With more servers in the future, the current circuits wouldn't suffice for long. He also needed to transform the basement into a cleanroom and improve the cooling system.
Although he could set up an ice magic array in the server room, William preferred using technology for tasks that could be handled with money. After all, this was a world of technology, and he wasn't short on cash. Moreover, a magic array couldn't maintain constant temperature and humidity. The power usage of servers fluctuated, causing temperature changes. Letting Sunday control the server room's temperature was much safer than using a magic array.
"Sunday, search online for data center requirements and place an order. The basement conditions are not yet suitable for a data center; we need to renovate it. Use my England Bank account to pay. The account is XX, password XX."
"Understood, Sir. Collecting data center design blueprints and simplifying the design to fit the castle's data center," Sunday paused for ten seconds, then said, "Order placed, Sir."
A minute later, William received a confirmation call from the bank's client manager. After a brief conversation and password verification, the manager politely said goodbye to William.
Hanging up the phone, William laughed heartily, "Creating you was a wise decision. From now on, I only need to issue orders for these trivial matters, and you can handle the rest. Well done, Sunday. I'm very satisfied with you."
"Thank you, Sir. Serving you is my mission and the purpose of my existence," Sunday replied.
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