Chapter 8: Global Effect
The internet collapsed one day and after a week of chaos, things seemed to have calmed down a bit.
At least people were no longer looting left and right, burning property, and destroying things just for a thrill.
Order seemed to have returned. Well, if you ignore the millions of worker taking the streets, worrying over their jobs.
The internet they once relied on to make a living was no longer safe. Nobody could own anything on the internet. And even going offline does not seem to help.
Many companies tried it after seeing that their systems were vulnerable, but that was also useless. Information still appeared on Study Aide and everyone could access it.
Even using paper was not a solution. It's just that the update was not as instantaneous.
This made many people afraid.
Within a week, everything seemed to have collapsed.
At least, everything that was resistant to change.
Those that were fast to adapt harvested heavily.
Education has never been more free. Just create an Ouroboros account and a whole new world would be open to you.
Study Aide made it easy to access free educational resources without discrimination or restrictions.
Everything is logically organized, explained, and easily understood. If that was still not enough, there were simulations and you could use VR glasses to access and study live with the aid of virtual teachers, AIs, and VIs.
It's just that this costs money. 1 yuan per hour and you'd get the world's best teachers guiding you through everything.
Of course, if you would rather not pay at all, it was also possible to get help from the community that was forming around Study Aide.
It could not be helped. Knowledge is power. And it seemed that Study. Aide had a vast collection of it and it was being updated every second.
There was also the power of money. Apart from free education, Study Aide is one of the many channels of making money that Ouroboros seems to have created.
All you had to do was teach some artificial intelligence all the things you could and get paid depending on the rate of learning. This job paid scarily well.
100 Dragon Coins per AI trained.
One had to know that 1 dragon coin can be exchanged for 100 eagle dollars or 800 yuan.
Just training one AI is enough to get 80,000 yuan. If you are smart enough to train one every other day, how much money can you make in a week? What about a month or a year?
This lucrative business attracted most people. You might as well spend time making money instead of running around in the streets.
Those with bigger brains opted for Skynet Enterprise.
Just creating one block of code or a function could earn you a minimum of 1,000 dragon coins. There had yet to be anyone reaching the upper limit but people were making crazy money.
Someone programmed the act of sitting and got 10,000 Dragon Coins.
The only difference between his code and the one that was already in the system was that the seats and the persons were different. He didn't even have to code directly but described the parameters and objectives to Xiao Lan in extra detail. Everything else was done automatically.
If this is not free money, then what is?
The only troubling thing is that there were so many people participating that it was getting more difficult to get an easy task to program.
Well, you could also take missions from Future News to do some weird stuff and get Dragon Coins.
Future News is scarily good.
Its information is accurate to the microsecond and this led to some awkward situations.
It would report a robbery before the robber got past the entrance. Other details would be updated as things developed.
An official was caught on camera receiving a chunk of money for some favors. The thing is, there were no cameras at all. Let alone a camera with 360-degree 3D recording capabilities.
Secrets were no longer secrets and all the dirt was out there for airing.
This really surprised the general populace. The plots were thick and foul, making people wonder whether humanity still had a future.
The ones that really felt the difference were the people in the financial sector.
Trading, you could only do it in the Future Investments Market.
Leaving aside that it was profitable with the aid of predictive AIs and other tools, just the efficiency and accuracy were far ahead of other platforms.
Of course, other platforms were still as volatile as ever giving traders no time to react.
There were fewer and fewer brokers with each passing day.
If governments were not so tenacious, bitterly holding on to markets for security purposes, maybe Future Investments would be the only platform left.
Well, everyone with eyes could see that other platforms had no future.
The mere fact that Ouroboros was mass-producing AIs was enough to show how powerful they were.
This trend could not be stopped.
Those that made the most money, however, were the entities willing to be Ouroboros spokespersons.
The Infinite Dragon Unlimited Company was mysterious and nobody seemed to know anything about it. But it was easy to be an agent for the company.
Just register online and if you pass the evaluation, a phone will be delivered to you with a dedicated AI.
Nobody knows what the evaluation is, but it sure is strict. Only 8 people have passed so far and they are all big shots.
As for benefits, apart from the monthly salary of 100,000 dragon coins, no additional information is available. But seeing how governments all over the world treasure these people, there must be more comprehensive benefits that make countries envious.
It could also be that they were the only link to Ouroboros that they had as of yet.
It could not be helped.
There were too many good things that the Infinite Dragon Unlimited Company had taken from them, and they had too many good things that they had in their hands.
The best example is the AIs that have been trained in Study Aide and Skynet Enterprise.
You could only get an AI from the representatives and they had the final say on who they could sell it to.
Of course, Jiang Hao had some regulations in place that had to be met before they could trade.
One of them was that they must use dollars or yuan for payment. This move directly put Dragon Country in a spot.
Everything about the company seemed to indicate that it was related to the Dragon Country, but they themselves had no idea about it. Quite a headache for the officials.
The other was that 70% of the representatives were dragon people. They also held the most privileges.
This was a good thing, but it was also a bad thing.
It was fortunate that nobody had gone crazy yet and decided to fight Dragon Country. Not that they were afraid.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone