The Baron G68 sliced through the clouds toward its final destination. Leon slumped in his seat, eyelids heavy as lead, exhaustion dragging him into a shallow sleep.
Dreams crashed over him like waves, pulling him back to 2023—the year of his college entrance exams, when AI broke loose like a wild stallion, reshaping every corner of the globe.
Born in 2005, Leon stood at life's crossroads that year, his future hinging on those exams. But the world had already been remade by the relentless tide of artificial intelligence.
The spark of that AI explosion, even now, burned vivid in his memory: the insane leap in GPU compute power.
Back in the early 2020s, graphics cards were gamers' holy grail. By 2022, NVIDIA dropped a bombshell—
a 4nm GPU architecture that quadrupled performance overnight. These chips ran cool as a breeze, sipping power like a low-watt bulb.
His roommate, Chubs, had gawked at the spec sheet, grinning like a kid: "This thing trains AI models and uses less juice than my AC!"
Training a model once took a hundred dusty GPUs chugging for a month. Now, a single RTX 4090 could spit out results in three days.
The compute bottleneck shattered, and AI crawled from labs into the streets.
Humanity stumbled into a new era: the Age of Total AI. Change was everywhere, rewiring life by the second.
On city streets, driverless "smart shuttles" ferried Sichuan University students, their onboard screens flashing class schedules, stops timed to the second.
A cheery voice chimed, "Next stop: Algorithm Theory. Please disembark."
In the skies, delivery drones streaked like silver comets, dropping packages on dorm windowsills with labels boasting,
"AI Delivery, 0.01-second precision."
When his mother's heart faltered, an AI health band caught it early, vibrating with a warning. Its screen popped up dietary tweaks and a prescription;
the hospital received a 3D heart model so crisp, the doctor muttered, "Clearer than my CT scans."
Urban AI systems like "Deep Blue Matrix" erased crime; Virtual idols hugged fans in VR. This wasn't the future—it was the baseline of daily life.
The dream deepened, AI's reach unfurling like a tapestry.
In his sophomore year, a neighbor, Mr. Zhang, limped into a clinic, wincing with a headache.
The doctor prescribed anti-inflammatories, but Zhang scoffed, waving his phone. Its AI health app suggested gabapentin for nerve pain.
The doctor rolled his eyes. "You trust a machine over me?"
Zhang doubled down: "It's faster."
Grumbling, the doctor pulled up recent journals on his computer—then froze. A fresh study backed the AI. Adjusting his glasses, he muttered, "This thing knows the literature better than I do…"
Zhang smirked, snatched the new prescription, and hobbled out, leaving the doctor staring blankly at his screen.
The music scene was wilder. Leon's classmate Kun, tone-deaf but obsessed, dove into AI composition software.
One night in their dorm, Kun hunched over his laptop, the interface glowing with options. Scratching his head, he typed:
"Breakup song, rainy vibe, piano."
The AI churned for three minutes, then delivered. The melody dripped like rain, piano notes swelling into a gut-punch chorus that echoed heartbreak. Kun tried humming along, voice cracking, tears spilling. "This… this hits too hard!"
He uploaded it to the web, slapping on a title:
"Seven-Day Echo, AI-Crafted, Breakup Essential."
By morning, the comments exploded:
"Who's the genius? Cried till dawn!" "This melody's a knife—can't shake it!"
A week later, a streaming platform offered $25,000 for the rights. Kun leapt onto a table, hollering, "AI's my muse, I'm just the delivery guy!"
But the high didn't last. AI-generated tracks flooded the net, drowning out human artists. A singer-songwriter clutched his guitar, sighing, "One AI song a day—who's got time for mine?"
In his junior year, Leon's classes rolled out a virtual AI teacher. It analyzed each student's data, tailored lessons, even predicted final grades.
Before a quiz, it flagged him: "Watch question 17—your logic reasoning's shaky." Sure enough, he flubbed a similar problem. The AI had already mapped his blind spots.
During exams, an AI proctor played hardball. Cameras swept the room like hawk eyes, tracking gaze and heart rate.
A classmate sneaked a glance at a neighbor's paper; half a centimeter of eye movement triggered a cold voice in his earbud:
"Gaze deviation logged. Second offense voids your test."
A red laser dot locked on his forehead. The room went dead quiet, pages turned with surgical care.
The human proctor sipped tea in the corner, chuckling, "I'm just here for show."
Entertainment went off the rails.
In a dorm huddle, classmates crowded around a laptop, buzzing over a new AI tool. Feed it two photos—your selfie and a crush or celebrity—and it churned out a 4K "intimate" video.
The detail was unreal: a fleeting tremble in a glance, the curve of a smile, even skin texture flawless.
One guy blushed watching a clip with the class heartthrob; another flaunted a "duet" with a global pop star. Laughter echoed through the room.
The tech went viral, social media awash with gasps: "This looks more real than reality!"
Within a year, it leapt to VR. Slip on a headset, and you didn't just watch—you felt. Touch, sound, even the brush of air, all simulated to perfection.
A roommate (not Leon, obviously) tried it, headset on, muttering, "She hugged me… it's too real."
The VR craze swept markets, tech firms racing to cash in. Privacy concerns surfaced, but developers brushed them off:
"It's just personal fantasy, private and contained." That hit a nerve—debates flared, then fizzled under the weight of obsession.
Cities changed. Cafes, subways, dorms brimmed with kids in AR glasses, eyes vacant, reality fading to a backdrop.
Virtual idols rose in tandem.
A company, HoYoRice, nailed the trend, launching an AI-crafted pop star, Vermoon.
She was unearthly—hair like a galaxy's spill, eyes like burning stars, a glance that stole your breath.
Her AI tailored her to each fan's taste: soft-spoken for some, icy for others. Every fan saw their perfect Vermoon.
Her debut VR concert drew 100 million viewers in 24 hours, her voice ethereal, her dance a fever dream.
Social media exploded: "Vermoon's my queen!" Fans, dubbing themselves "Moonlit Knights," swore to "grind for her forever."
With premium VR, fans could "meet" her—handshakes, hugs, even moments too spicy for public platforms.
A roommate blew his stipend on a "companion session," returning starry-eyed: "She said I was incredible in there. Worth every cent!"
HoYoRice's profits soared, virtual idols spreading like wildfire.
But cracks showed.
On TV, experts railed: "This tech blurs reality and fantasy, shredding social bonds! Privacy's gone, ethics trampled!"
Public reaction was murky.
Online, users clashed—some decried "moral decay," others championed "personal freedom."
Privately, few resisted. Sneak a video, slip on a headset—no one's hurt, no one knows.
Leon felt torn. AI's precision awed him—the leap from pixels to tactile illusion was a marvel.
Yet unease gnawed. When virtual hugs outshone real ones, when AI idols eclipsed human stars, what was left of connection?
In class, a professor posed a question:
"Will virtual reality replace the real world?"
No one had an answer. In his dream, Leon stood in the University's lab, facing the massive screen of "Zeus."
Vermoon's shadow flickered, whispering, "When fantasy feels truer than reality, which do you choose?"
Leon tried to speak, but his throat locked. Questions surged: Where was humanity headed?
Even then, warnings echoed. In his freshman year, ethicists sounded alarms: unchecked AI could erode privacy, strip human agency.
Radicals went further, predicting AI would outsmart humanity, seize control, and unravel society.
A UN AI Ethics Committee report, issued at a global tech summit, struck a grim tone:
"When AI's autonomy and learning outpace human oversight, it risks infiltrating every sector, upending work, life, and social order."
The warnings sparked debate, but the AI tide was unstoppable.
Driverless cars eased traffic, smart medicine saved lives, virtual stars filled emotional voids. Convenience and profit drowned out dissent. AR-clad teens roamed streets, AI assistants anticipated needs, markets boomed.
Ethicists' cries, policymakers' talks, even the UN report faded. As long as AI didn't directly threaten daily life, most turned a blind eye. Fear gave way to numbness.
Dire predictions of "AI ruling the world" became old news, ignored as the tech wave's shadow grew darker, unchecked.