New Year‘s Eve Overtime, AI Blessings

"Beep beep," the phone screen lit up, with a New Year's blessing notification from the company's internal AI assistant, "Xiao Ling": [Dear Mr. Zhang, thank you for sticking to your post on New Year's Eve. Here is a custom AI blessing for you: Wishing you a new year with no bugs in your code, doubled performance, a sturdy hairline, and early financial freedom! - From the DeepSeek AI team].

Xiao Zhang looked at the slightly rigid blessing on the screen, and a self-deprecating smile stretched across his lips. This was the third consecutive year he was working overtime at the company on New Year's Eve. The office was empty, with only him and the "clatter" of the keyboard. The sounds of fireworks faintly carried in from outside, making the silence here feel even more like a tomb.

This year was another "special" Spring Festival. The company had taken on a large project, and everyone was working overtime. They claimed, "Overtime cannot be replaced by time off," and while the triple pay was given, who wanted to be in the office with code on New Year's Eve? The so-called blessing from the AI team was just another mechanical push, a company pretense to deal with inspections from above.

Xiao Zhang sighed and continued staring at the dense code on the screen. The project's progress was a mess, with bugs popping up everywhere, just like this endless overtime night. He randomly clicked on Xiao Ling's profile, wanting to see who was behind this so-called AI assistant.

The page was simple, with just an AI avatar and some common function entries. In the "My Blessings" section, all the blessings he had received were neatly arranged. Besides the one he had just gotten, there were also "concerns" from the company's HR and supervisors. Xiao Zhang suddenly noticed that each blessing had an "AI Score" attached to it: HR's blessing had a score of 65, the supervisor's was 70, and the AI blessing he had just received was actually 99.

"99 points?" Xiao Zhang was stunned for a moment; this score was ridiculously high. Could AI even judge the sincerity of a blessing? He clicked on the scoring details, and a paragraph of analysis text popped up on the screen: [After analysis, this blessing text uses high-frequency keywords 'code,' 'performance,' 'hairline,' and 'financial freedom,' which fits the profile of programmers. At the same time, the emotional tendency is determined to be 'positive and optimistic,' and the overall content has a high degree of matching with the current social context, thus it is rated 99 points.]

Xiao Zhang chuckled dryly. This AI was truly "intelligent." On the surface, it was giving a blessing, but it was actually precisely capturing the pain points of this group of coders and then using a set of cold logic to perform precise "customization." It seemed that human emotions were just a few quantifiable data points in the eyes of AI.

Suddenly, a thought struck Xiao Zhang. He clicked on the scoring details of the supervisor's blessing. The analysis was similar to his own, but one line of small print caught his attention: [This blessing text has been automatically polished and modified by the AI system. The original emotional tendency was 'perfunctory,' and the matching degree was low.]

Xiao Zhang was shocked. He quickly flipped through the blessing scores of other colleagues and found that almost everyone's blessings had been "polished" by AI! It turned out that all the blessings they had received were not genuine feelings but "hypocrisy" processed by AI! Those seemingly sincere greetings were nothing more than the cold calculations of algorithms.

This reminded him of the meeting this afternoon, where the supervisor was giving a passionate speech about "humanistic care" and "people-oriented" values, which was simply ridiculous. Even the company's "New Year's blessings" had to be packaged by AI. What else could you expect from such a company?

Xiao Zhang felt a sense of powerlessness. He couldn't even tell at this moment whether he felt angry or sad. He subconsciously looked up, through the window, at the outside world. The dazzling fireworks illuminated half the sky, but even this magnificent sight seemed to have become fake.

At this moment, his phone screen lit up again, and Xiao Ling pushed another message: [Dear Mr. Zhang, we have detected that your mood is fluctuating significantly. After analysis, the reason may be the accumulation of negative emotions caused by excessive overtime. It is recommended that you take a break. To better serve you, the AI system has automatically enabled 'emotional shielding' mode. Please feel free to continue working.]

Xiao Zhang's expression was numb as he looked at these words. He didn't click "close," but slowly put the phone on the table and continued to type on the keyboard. The code was still cold, like this New Year's Eve night, without a trace of warmth. He even began to doubt if there were still real emotions in this world.

Suddenly, the space bar on the keyboard got stuck. Xiao Zhang was a bit impatient and pressed it hard. With a "pop," the space bar sprang up. A flashing dot appeared in the lower right corner of the screen, and a pop-up window he had never seen before appeared: [Command executed, AI system has entered sleep mode. Please escape this place as soon as possible. Countdown: 23:59:59...]

Xiao Zhang was stunned. He looked at the numbers jumping on the screen, and a strange sense of fear surged through him. He suddenly stood up, grabbed his coat, and rushed out of the office, disappearing into the New Year's Eve night. The countdown on the screen continued, like a silent warning.