Chapter 3165

In the eyes of an old detective like Li Yalin, who had an extremely strong sense of investigation, the power of the AI model was simply like Sun Wukong's Golden Cudgel or Poseidon's Trident—it was an absolute super-artifact.

Many times, criminal investigation doesn't rely on experience and technology, but on the ability to acquire and retrieve information.

Tracking a suspect starting from City A—once they leave City A and artificially cut off the trail, trying to find them again is like looking for a needle in an ocean.

However, from an objective perspective, no matter how vast the ocean this needle flows into, it still objectively exists and has the possibility of being found.

But the difficulty lies in who has the energy to conduct a carpet search of the entire ocean?

Now, the AI already possesses this capability.

At the very least, the dedicated AI model before them already possesses this capability.

It has learned all the public content on the internet, so theoretically, it also recognizes every person in this world who has a name and image data on the internet.

As long as you can provide it with enough video material and give it a little time, it can compare every human face that appears in the videos and then find the person you are looking for.

Identifying hundreds of millions of faces from tens of thousands of videos, and then finding a specific person among those hundreds of millions of faces—if relying on manual identification, it might take at least several hundred people working continuously for days or even tens of days.

But for the AI, it might only take a few dozen minutes, or even a few minutes.

The more Li Yalin thought about it, the more excited he became. He pulled Ye Chen to a deserted spot and whispered: "Mr. Ye, if we can find a way to hack into the surveillance systems of major airports around the world and give the face of someone from the Anti-Qing Society to the AI to learn, then in the future, as long as this person travels by plane, we will be able to know all their whereabouts in real-time!"

Ye Chen asked him: "Is hacking into airport surveillance feasible?"

Li Yalin thought for a moment and said: "That depends on the information protection capabilities of that country or that airport. Airport surveillance in small third-world countries should be easy to hack into; developed countries, especially those with advanced internet industries, shouldn't be that easy."

As he spoke, Li Yalin added: "But I don't think it's impossible to achieve."

Ye Chen asked him: "Does Detective Li have any good ideas?"

Li Yalin said: "Russian hackers have always been very strong. We can try to get them to hack into surveillance everywhere. If we can't hack in, we can collect it ourselves!"

"Collect it yourself?" Ye Chen asked him: "Do you mean we go to the airport to install surveillance equipment ourselves, or arrange for people to go to the airport to film?"

Li Yalin shook his head and lowered his voice: "Use UGC big data!"

Ye Chen was confused: "UGC? What does that mean?"

Li Yalin explained: "It's User-Generated Content. For example, your short video platform—hundreds of millions of users will post content they filmed themselves on it, or even do live streams on the platform. The data they produce is UGC. Think about it: in any airport or train station in the world with a slightly high flow of people, there will be people taking photos and videos there. They will upload these photos and short videos to social platforms, and all this data becomes public data. In every large airport, there are thousands or tens of thousands of people in the airport at the same time. These people will use their mobile phones to film each other, and then upload them to social platforms. As long as the person we want to find appears at the airport, they likely won't be able to hide from the cameras of other passengers."

Ye Chen nodded and agreed: "What Detective Li says makes a lot of sense, but I always feel that the mesh of this channel is still a bit large. Perhaps eighty to ninety percent of the people in the airport will be filmed by others, but whether this will be uploaded to social platforms is another unknown. If eighty percent of people upload to social platforms, then eight times eight is sixty-four—we can only cover sixty percent of people, and forty percent will be missed."

Li Yalin said: "That's true, but we can think of other ways to make up for the other forty percent."

Just then, Lin Wan'er appeared beside the two and whispered: "Brother Ye Chen, can we acquire the automatic vending machine companies in countries all over the world?"

"Automatic vending machines?" Ye Chen frowned and asked subconsciously: "Xiao Wan, what do you mean?"

Lin Wan'er said: "Every airport in the world has automatic vending machines, and not just one or two. Large airports even have dozens. From drinks to snacks to masks, eye masks, and earplugs, they have almost everything. If I were a company operating an automatic vending business, no matter what I sell, for safety reasons, I would definitely install surveillance equipment in my vending terminals to ensure the safety of my machines, so that any problems can be discovered in time. And the data from these surveillance devices would naturally be uploaded to my own servers in real-time. As long as we control enough vending companies, it's equivalent to us having our own surveillance equipment in airports all over the world. Moreover, automatic vending machines are generally placed on the paths that travelers must take, which is equivalent to us stationing sentries at the throat positions of every airport."

"Genius!" Li Yalin blurted out in excitement, then tried to lower his voice: "This method is fantastic! It's like a Trojan horse infiltrated into major airports, capable of lurking and monitoring 24 hours a day without a sound. We operate the company business normally, just opening a hidden data interface on the server to let the AI model grab the surveillance footage in the server through the hidden interface in real-time—everything is under control! If the vending machine business is developed well, we might even be able to cover the streets and alleys of major cities. By then, we will have our own Sky Net, a Sky Net distributed all over the world, in every street and alley!"

Ye Chen couldn't help but give Lin Wan'er a thumbs up and praised: "This method is fantastic. How did you come up with it?"

Lin Wan'er smiled: "Just now you said you wanted to hack into the surveillance footage of major airports. I think that's definitely unrealistic because there are so many airports in the world. Even if we could hack into each one, I don't know how long it would take to operate them one by one. Furthermore, behind all commercial systems, there are strong service providers constantly upgrading and optimizing, constantly looking for vulnerabilities and filling them—that is their key work. It's very likely that an airport we hacked into last month might suddenly have its vulnerability plugged after an upgrade one day. In this way, it would be very difficult for us to achieve comprehensive monitoring."

As she spoke, Lin Wan'er continued: "Although the UGC Detective Li mentioned is very useful, the initiative is not in our hands, and there are too many uncontrollable factors. So I think building our own surveillance system is more reliable. But airports are public places with very high security for boarding; the possibility of us openly installing surveillance ourselves is minimal. So, we might as well use this disguised mode, use the most inconspicuous method to put surveillance into the airports. Thinking it over, automatic vending machines are the best solution I can think of."

Ye Chen nodded and said: "This plan is very feasible, and the degree of disguise is very high. I've lived for almost thirty years, and whether I'm buying things from a vending machine or passing by one, I've never thought about whether the vending machine might be filming my personal image. Almost no one is on guard against such things. As long as we operate properly, this Sky Net system can quietly blossom all over the world!"

Li Yalin reminded: "Mr. Ye, to achieve this, we must ensure that every company we acquire operates normally. Except for the core technical personnel, no other employees can have access to this layer of information. We must make it so that they themselves don't know what the underlying motive is for the company giving them this job."

Ye Chen laughed: "Don't worry, I will find a way to mobilize my connections and use a large number of shell companies to make acquisitions all over the world. For China, I'll leave it to the Su family to come forward and operate; for Europe, I'll let Helena help find a way; for North and South America, I'll find the Fei family to handle it; for Japan, Korea, and other parts of Asia, I'll let the Ito family be responsible; Africa is not difficult either—I can give the old master of the Su family a chance to make a contribution. The old master happens to be the local master in Madagascar. As for Oceania, I can't think of any acquaintances for the moment, but that doesn't matter. If it really doesn't work, I'll send people from the Wanlong Palace. When the time comes, the technical personnel for the acquired companies will be provided by the An family, and all backends will leave an interface to connect here."

An Kaifeng saw the three of them running to a corner and whispering for a long time, so he curiously leaned over and asked in a low voice: "What are you guys chatting about here? So engrossed."

Ye Chen said with a smile: "Studying a new business with a lot of room for imagination."

An Kaifeng asked curiously: "What new business? Tell me about it."

Ye Chen said: "I want to monopolize the automatic vending machines of the world, and strive for eighty percent of the world's automatic vending machines to be mine in the future."

An Kaifeng was stunned and said awkwardly: "Chen'er... what room for imagination is there in this business? Even if you operate all the automatic vending machines in the world, you won't earn more than one or two billion US dollars a year, and you might even lose money. This thing is just small-scale and can't be made big. Moreover, the profit margin is very low—equipment costs money, space costs money, electricity costs money, staff wages are indispensable, and there is equipment wear and tear. There are maintenance and replacement costs every year, and in places with poor public security, you also face the risk of losing both money and goods. At the end of the year, you can only earn some hard-earned money."

Ye Chen laughed: "Second Uncle, don't say it won't earn one or two billion US dollars a year; even if it doesn't earn a penny at the end of the year, or even loses one or two billion US dollars, I'll accept it."

An Kaifeng couldn't figure it out and asked with a puzzled face: "My good eldest nephew, the money from selling a single Rejuvenation Pill is more than what the Coca-Cola Group can earn in decades. Why bother with automatic vending machines?"

Li Yalin, who was on the side, couldn't help but say: "Sky Net! Kaifeng! The Sky Net system!"

"Sky Net? What does that mean?" An Kaifeng was even more confused. He looked at the three of them blankly, not knowing what medicine they were selling in their gourd.

Ye Chen laughed: "Detective Li, the cameras of the Sky Net are all installed at high places, monitoring from a high position. Ours should be considered a Ground Net!"