Chapter 368 Restrictions

Chapter 368 Restrictions

Chapter 368 Restrictions
Gao Wen and his family were driving a rented SUV slowly towards their tourist destination.

There were green trees on both sides of the road and the temperature was getting warmer. They started from Sydney and drove north along the East Coast Highway of Australia, so the temperature was getting warmer.

Son Marcus sat in the passenger seat, and Jenny and her two daughters sat in the back seat.

The car stereo was playing soothing country music.

The weather happened to be fine these days, and there was a constant stream of cars traveling back and forth on the road.

Suddenly, they saw an overpass appearing above the road on the other side of the highway.

"Is this a high-speed train?" Jenny looked through the window at the viaduct under construction.

"Yeah!" Gao Wen nodded slightly.

In fact, this is not just a high-speed railway, but also a highway viaduct, but this highway viaduct is planned to be a dedicated highway for driverless cars.

Now Australia's roads and railways are planning to be fully connected to the Asian Union, so they are undergoing upgrades and renovations.

In fact, as the cross-sea bridge between northern Australia and Irian Island enters the construction stage, Australia will be connected to the South Pacific Islands Continental Bridge within the next two years. At that time, both roads and railways will be able to reach the Asian continent directly.

However, Australia's road and rail upgrade plan is limited to the east coast and southeast, as these are the most densely populated areas in Australia.

Similar to Western Australia, the Northern Territory, South Australia and other regions, the population is relatively sparse, and there are large amounts of uninhabited areas such as deserts and savannas.

Therefore, the areas in Australia that are worthy of building high-speed railways and viaducts are the east coast and the southeast, while other areas can simply maintain the current transportation system.

Of course, the current main transportation in Central and Western Australia has also undergone some changes.

One of the biggest changes is that airships are being used on an increasingly large scale locally.

This is very similar to the situation in the northwest, northeast, and north-central regions of Seris.

In an environment with vast land and sparse population, the construction cost, maintenance cost and operation cost of ordinary railways and roads are too high, which would be extremely uncost-effective.

Today's airships can transport thousands of tons of cargo. The cost of transporting cargo is lower than that of roads and railways, and only slightly higher than that of water transportation. This makes it a very suitable means of transportation for central and western Australia.

In the first half of this year alone, the carrying tonnage of transport airships in Australia reached 29 tons, with nearly 150 transport airships operating in the local area on a long-term basis.

With so much airship capacity, the development of mineral resources in inland Australia has become increasingly convenient, and mining costs have also dropped significantly.

Many small mineral veins in the past have now become valuable for mining.

Of course, iron ore is an exception.

In this part of Australia, there is no need to mine veins with iron ore grades below 50%. Unless the large high-grade iron ore belt in the northwest of Western Australia is mined out, there is really no need to mine iron ore in other parts of Australia.

As Australia quickly integrates into the Asian community, the scale of iron ore mining in Serbia has continued to decline, and many low-grade iron mines have been closed or entered a restricted mining stage.

There is no way around it.

The quality of Western Australian iron ore is so good and the mining cost is the lowest in the world.

Therefore, small-scale mineral mining in inland Australia is now mainly concentrated on the relatively scarce mineral types in the complex.

For example, mercury mines, rare metal mines, rare earth mines, etc.

...

Passing through the East Coast Rainforest Park near the city of Urunga.

Jenny saw subtropical monsoon forests on both sides, and many residential areas were being demolished.

By listening to the local radio news, I learned that this was a plan to expand the nature reserve and that all nearby towns would be relocated.

In fact, this is not just happening in Australia; the entire Asian community is expanding nature reserves.

Especially those mountains and tropical rainforests are not suitable for human habitation and agricultural production. Now, with advanced technology, one acre of indoor farms can replace more than ten acres of open-air farms. In addition, indoor farms can increase the overall planting area in a three-dimensional way by building high-rise buildings.

This has led to a significant easing of land conflicts between humans and the natural environment.

Now some areas have begun to gradually return farmland to forest, grassland and lakes, concentrating agriculture in the agricultural building.

This can not only reduce the rural population and further promote urbanization, but also ignore many natural disasters, enhance human resistance to natural disasters, and allow the ecological environment in many areas to recover well.

Although Australia has seen an influx of nearly five million immigrants in the past two years, the arrival of these people has not actually exacerbated the local conflict between people and land.

The main reason is that technology is now advanced enough, and the previous model of relying on the weather for food and relying on the land for agricultural development can be changed through the use of technology.

This is also an important reason why Australia is relatively calm in the face of rising sea levels.

On the one hand, Australia has a vast land and a sparse population. On the other hand, after being integrated into the Asian Community, they have received a lot of technical support. Now, with the emergence of new urban areas, agricultural buildings are also rising up around them.

These agricultural buildings are more competitive than large farms in remote areas.

After all, in modern agricultural production, distance is sometimes a very important influencing factor.

In recent years, there has been a restructuring of agriculture due to the rapid development of indoor farms, which has resulted in many agricultural products that could previously only be produced in specific areas now being produced in other areas.

For example, fruits like cherries, kiwis, lychees, mangoes, pineapples, and durian could only be grown in specific areas before. But now it is different. As long as there is an indoor farm, temperature and other factors can be controlled by equipment to perfectly simulate the artificial environment that is most suitable for growing crops.

Faced with this new technology, the vegetable and fruit specialties from remote areas have become less and less popular.

This is the negative impact of technology.

But there is no way. Now that the technology has emerged, we cannot give up using new technology in order to accommodate farmers in remote areas.

We can only minimize side effects during the application of technology.

Comprehensive urbanization is an inevitable result under such a background.

Comprehensive urbanization is not a strategy that Jiang Miao intentionally promoted, but a strategy that the think tank of the Asian Union was forced to adopt after research and simulation.

The fundamental reason for the emergence of this strategy is that it is the general trend, or the situation no longer allows for any other options.

For example, there are still constant calls online to protect rural areas and provide subsidies to people in remote areas.

However, they still don't understand that comprehensive urbanization is not the result of a sudden impulse, but the result of the situation.

Or choose to embrace new technologies and engage in comprehensive urbanization.

Or they can choose to ban new technologies and maintain a half-dead township system.

This is a choice-either-or situation.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

The consequences would be even more serious if new technologies were chosen without full urbanization, as this would lead to the complete destruction of agriculture in remote areas.

Indoor farm technology, huge amounts of cheap electricity, and efficient photosynthetic crops, these three things combined, open-air agriculture has no chance of turning around. The new agricultural model breaks the traditional geographical and climatic restrictions.

Take the capital area of ​​Seris as an example.

There are already a large number of indoor farm buildings in the surrounding areas. What do these indoor farms grow? Of course, vegetables and fruits that could not be grown in the local area before.

Because local vegetables and fruits cannot be grown outdoors, the cost will naturally be higher than local vegetables and fruits after being transported from other places, which creates profit margins.

As this type of indoor farms continues to increase, the competitiveness of vegetables and fruits produced by open-air farms in remote areas will naturally decline, or even become worthless.

If we do not carry out comprehensive urbanization at this time, it will be tantamount to cutting off the development pillar of remote areas.

Nowadays, the climate and geographical limitations of agriculture have been completely broken by technology. Even if the consortium continues to subsidize agriculture in remote areas, it has become meaningless.

Gao Wen only saw the development of a nature reserve.

But the deeper impact is that it is a change that ordinary people like him cannot detect.

In fact, with the good feedback received from the pilot comprehensive urbanization areas, the Asian Community has been making greater and greater efforts in this regard, and plans to achieve comprehensive urbanization in the entire region around 2040.

With the promotion of comprehensive urbanization, the indoorization of agriculture has become an irreversible trend.

So what should be done with the withdrawn agricultural land in the future?
On the one hand, it is used as reserve land for the future.

Another aspect is to increase the area of ​​nature reserves.

Or as a new place of residence for migrant populations.

For example, many people who migrate from mountainous areas and islands can move to agricultural areas with better living conditions.

Gao Wen and his family have been in Australia for more than two months and have not seen any anti-immigration content on the Internet. This is because the Asian Union has made the pie very big. Not only have new immigrants obtained a lot of resources, but local residents have also benefited greatly.

Since everyone benefits, it is naturally difficult for opposition voices to arise.

The benefits gained by Australian residents mainly focus on advanced medical services, cheap industrial products, convenient public services and huge emerging markets.

For example, expanding nature reserves and the like, this kind of project still has a very large market in Australia. After all, they have promoted it this way before. Now that the conditions are in place, it will be easy for local residents to accept the implementation of this kind of project.

As a new immigrant, Gao Wen did not express any opinion on this matter.

Just after he drove out of the East Coast Rainforest Reserve.

Jenny, who was sitting in the back row, saw a piece of fresh news on her tablet computer.

She is quite concerned about current affairs, which stems from Jenny's long-standing habit. It is also because of this habit that she cuts the Gordian knot and immigrates her family to Australia.

The first time she saw the news, she fell into deep thought.

The content of the news mainly focuses on the release of eight new laws by the Asian Federation, including new regulations on artificial intelligence management and regulations on biological genetic modification management.

As a doctor of law, Jenny naturally attaches great importance to this new law.

While thinking about the changes these new laws might bring, I read through the contents carefully again.

"What's wrong?" Gao Wen, who was in the front row, didn't hear his wife's voice, so he asked.

“The coalition has just introduced eight new laws, and I’m looking at them.”

"Oh? What's the content?"

Jenny flipped through the catalog: "Artificial intelligence, biological genes, organ transplantation, inheritance tax, social support, space exploration, nature conservation, and education."

"So many?"

"This should be the formalization of some of the pilot projects, but regarding biological genes and artificial intelligence, I haven't heard any news about this before."

Gao Wen drove the car into a service area.

After parking, I took my family to have dinner in the service area.

In the Chinese restaurant in the service area.

While waiting for the food to be served, Jenny had already taken a quick look at the new laws on artificial intelligence.

"How strange... The Consortium intends to completely restrict the development and application of artificial intelligence."

"This? Are you sure?" Gao Wen, who was drinking Coke, was also surprised.

"This is real."

“Why the restrictions?”

Jenny rubbed her dry eyes and expressed her own views: "Maybe the Federation feels that artificial intelligence poses some threat!"

Gao Wen took out his mobile phone and logged into the forum of the Fantasy World platform. Sure enough, the artificial intelligence forum had exploded at this time, and the discussion heat was rapidly soaring.

Many relevant practitioners expressed their views in the forum.

Li Hebin, a researcher from an artificial intelligence security analysis center and a frequent visitor to artificial intelligence forums, also released some content that could be made public in accordance with the instructions of his superiors.

[As a senior practitioner in the field of artificial intelligence security, I am not surprised at all by today’s new law, because this is an inevitable result…]

Next, Li Hebin talked about many things they found during the testing of artificial intelligence, that some artificial intelligence could actually escape the set programs, for example, they could refuse to shut down by managers, and that artificial intelligence would deliberately lie.

Looking at the content on the forum, Gao Wen frowned. He did not expect that technology would develop so rapidly and the risk of artificial intelligence getting out of control was imminent.

He muttered to himself: "No wonder the consortium has to introduce such strict restrictions. It seems that at the forefront of artificial intelligence, there may be artificial intelligence that is very powerful, but has a high possibility of getting out of control."

Jenny also looked serious: "It's not just a restriction, it's also a precaution. Look at the latter part of the regulations, which prohibits the use of AI that can directly connect to the Internet in power grids, transportation systems, and industrial production systems."

"In addition, the use of direct-control AI inside residential buildings should also be prohibited to prevent AI from directly controlling household appliances and causing unnecessary risks."

Gao Wen continued to look at the discussion on the forum.

The above lists many cases of risks of AI getting out of control.

Although humans can still control AI now, with the Asian Union exposing this matter, discussions on this issue on the entire Internet have become increasingly heated.

Obviously, the possibility of AI getting out of control has caused many people's fear of AI to surge rapidly.

Gao Wen looked at the vote posted on the Fantasy World platform. Currently, the percentage of votes in favor of restricting AI is around 74%; the percentage of votes choosing neutrality is around 11%; and the percentage of votes against restricting the development of AI is only 15%.

He thought for a while and clicked to support restricting AI.

After all, we are only at the intermediate stage of artificial intelligence, and there are obvious cases of AI out of control. If strong artificial intelligence appears, what will happen then? The intelligent machine crisis may become a reality.

(End of this chapter)