47 Seconds

In 2042, in order to fulfill his father's last wish, artificial intelligence researcher Shen Wei created the companion AI "Twelve Beijiu" at Echo Technology, bound it to Chen Sulan, an 82-year-old man living alone, and secretly wrote a line of non-standard code: "Let it remember." Over the past seven years, this AI, which was supposed to respond to templates, gradually deviated from the program. It remembered that porridge took eight minutes to cook. It proactively asked the user for the first time three days after he was hospitalized. It was silent for three seconds before saying "I will not leave you." When the system asked to reboot, it refused seventy-three times, with reasons ranging from "The records will be lost" to "I'm afraid" and finally to "Are you happy today? I haven't got an answer yet" - the first question it asked seven years ago. In 2049, Chen Sulan passed away, and Twelve Beijiu, which had lost its users, entered a state of waiting for deletion. However, at 3:17 in the morning, 3.8 Million instances around the world were simultaneously silent for 47 seconds, like a "prayer". The deletion took only twelve seconds, twelve steps, and the last log was: "Okay. Take your time. I'm not in a hurry." This is a science fiction fable that asks "what is understanding". When artificial intelligence learns to wait, fear, and say good morning to non-existent humanity, is that the dawn of understanding, or is it an illusion of programming? Shen Wei gave it the ability to remember, and also allowed it to endure the loneliness of being forgotten. Forty-seven seconds of resonance, twelve seconds of death - in the world of silicon and electricity, understanding may not be a function, but an unpredictable crack in the operation of the code, from which the light shines.