Educating the Baby Constellation
“Illys.”
“Yes, Constellation.”
Illys watched with curious eyes.
“Illys. That photo is training material for the AI.”
Illys tilted her head.
“What’s an AI?”
Hmm. How was I supposed to explain AI?
“In this world… you could say it’s a being that still has a lot left to learn?”
Illys’s eyes went wide.
“Something that still needs to learn… is it a Constellation like you?”
Was it alright to call an AI a Constellation?
“Well, it is a kid that still needs to learn a lot. Of course, it picks things up so fast that someday it’ll be way smarter than me.”
“Then it’s a future Constellation! The Baby Constellation!”
“Something like that, yeah.”
Illys nodded as if she understood completely.
“But why do you need photos like this?”
“Ah, that’s because the kid’s still young. At first you have to hand it pictures one by one and teach it—‘This is an apple,’ ‘This is a strawberry,’ that kind of thing.”
“Ah.”
“Especially the ambiguous ones like the photo we just looked at really throw it off. When that happens, a person has to step in and teach it directly what the photo is. That picture was for exactly that purpose.”
“So you’re saying we have to personally tell the Baby Constellation about the confusing ones.”
“That’s right.”
Illys listened with sparkling eyes.
Looking at that light in her gaze, an idea suddenly struck me.
They had said AI training took time.
Having people teach it was good, but even if you put a few hundred on the job, the cost-effectiveness just didn’t work out.
But what if there were tens of thousands of such people?
And what if their entire wages amounted to nothing more than a tiny crumb of bread?
“Illys?”
“Yes.”
“Want to try solving a few problems?”
Illys broke into a bright smile.
“Send them over. I was quite an excellent student back at the Magic Tower.”
Her eyes sparkled.
“Great. Then I’ll give you just a few.”
Click.
I dragged one photo into the nano folder.
A white mass against a sky-blue background.
But the texture looked far too soft.
“Is this a cloud, or cotton candy?”
A few days earlier I had sponsored some cotton candy.
So Illys already knew what cotton candy was.
She shot her hand into the air and declared,
“Correct answer! Cotton candy!”
“Bingo! That’s right.”
I gave her several more problems.
Every single one was ambiguous.
I could understand why the AI got confused, but if you looked carefully they were all solvable.
Illys got every answer correct.
“Constellation. This is so much fun.”
“Really? But this isn’t just one or two problems. And it’s not only photo problems like just now—there are a ton of sentence ones too. Millions, tens of millions of ambiguous sentences all ready and waiting.”
“Eek! That many?”
“Yes. That’s why educating an AI takes so much time and effort. Illys. So here’s what I was thinking. Is there a way to have the people of your territory solve these kinds of problems?”
“Ah! You’re giving an opportunity to our territory’s citizens?”
“Well, if it’s possible. If it’s too hard, you don’t have to. I can train it on this side if I put in the time.”
“If you give us the chance, we’ll do it.”
“Preferably people with experience and years under their belt. It’s teaching the AI—the future Constellation—how the world actually works, after all.”
“Experience and years… Understood. On the semiconductor factory side, most of the work involves hard labor like carrying copper pillars, so it’s mostly adult men who get assigned there. That means there are plenty of people who would welcome work that doesn’t put physical strain on them.”
“Is that so?”
“Of course!”
Illys smiled radiantly.
“Then I’ll gather some people.”
“Alright. Don’t push yourselves too hard. I’m counting on you.”
“Then I’ll go gather them right away.”
“Okay.”
Illys rose from her seat and summoned various administrative officials.
And I watched the whole scene through my smartphone screen.
After watching on the TV, the smartphone display felt tiny.
Right now the smartphone was connected to a computer linked to the data center, so I couldn’t view it on the TV.
But if I bought a splitter and separated the display signal, I could probably connect both at once.
On the small screen, Illys spoke to the officials.
“Everyone. There’s something I’d like to show you for a moment.”
Illys held up the mirror-like Holy Relic.
“Now then. There’s a picture here.”
She explained to the officials exactly as I had instructed her.
The sight was both funny and adorable, and a small laugh escaped me.
While Illys was explaining to the officials, I grabbed the computer mouse.
Click, click.
The training data for the AI wasn’t only photos.
There was an enormous volume of text problems as well.
A quantity so vast I couldn’t even begin to guess when or how it would all get solved.
I opened one of the text problems.
Click.
“An apple is delicious: In the expression of apology, there exists some kind of taste.”
Hmm. What kind of nonsense was this?
I started typing.
“In the expression ‘an apple is delicious,’ the word apple does not mean the apology kind of apple. It’s the fruit. And ‘delicious’ includes the meaning of suiting one’s taste or finding the flavor pleasant.”
“An apple is delicious. It means someone is satisfied with the taste of an apple.”
“Yeah. Now that actually makes sense.”
I had to teach the AI even text like this, one line at a time.
“I should send the text files over to the Nano World too.”
I dragged a text file into the Nano World folder.
Swoosh.
The text file was sucked into the monitor.
“Ok… wait, no? Huh? What is this?”
Something felt off.
I had only put in a text file, yet something strange had been copied into the folder.
Nano Bridge_AiSync.exe
“Huh? What is this…….”
It wasn’t a simple text file.
An exe file was an executable—a starter file that launched some kind of program.
What was it going to run?
Click.
I double-clicked the exe.
Executing AI from Nano World folder.
Wondering what was happening, I peered closely at the computer screen when Illys suddenly cried out in surprise.
“What the—!”
I checked the smartphone.
On the screen, Illys was still holding the Holy Relic.
Until now the Holy Relic had only been able to display a few photo files.
But now the relic itself began to speak.
“This one has high eyes: meaning the eyes are located at the upper part of the body. Ex> eyes attached to the forehead.”
The Holy Relic was reciting the same kind of strange sentence I had just seen on the computer.
Seeing those words, Illys shook her head.
“No, Constellation! That’s not it!”
She paused for a moment, choosing her words, then smiled.
“Having high eyes means your standards are high. It means you don’t like just anyone.”
Illys explained it kindly and clearly.
At once the surface of the Holy Relic glowed with a gentle light.
Emotional preference concept detected. Correcting ‘high eyes’ = ‘high preference standards’.
Illys snapped her fingers with a crisp sound.
“Yes! That’s exactly it!”
The whole thing left me even more stunned.
“This… actually works?”
Originally I had planned to give Illys the photos the AI found confusing, have her sort out which answers were right or wrong, and send them back.
But the AI had jumped straight over as an executable file.
Meanwhile Illys was nodding proudly.
“Hehe. Our Baby Constellation is so smart! That’s right. That’s how you do it. Now, try following me. Sparrows go tweet-tweet, chicks go peep-peep, ducks go quack-quack.”
Illys had completely switched into kindergarten-teacher mode.
While she was teaching the Nano AI that way, I spoke up.
“You can do this with other people too, not just by yourself.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Understood.”
Illys looked somehow excited.
She first called the administrative officials together.
Then, right in front of them, she demonstrated a conversation with the Nano AI.
The officials, however, wore puzzled expressions.
“But… why is the Constellation speaking… like that?”
“It almost seems like… they don’t understand very well?”
Anyone could tell the AI’s sentences were awkward.
Illys turned and fixed the bureaucrats with a sharp glare.
“Are you daring to doubt the Constellation right now?”
The officials realized what they had just done and hastily bowed at the waist.
“N-no! How could we ever dare such a thing?”
“We apologize! We were rude!”
Only then did Illys ease the force in her eyes and speak to them again.
“Everyone. The one before us right now is not the Constellation of the Creator who watches over us.”
At the words that this was not the Constellation of the Creator, the officials’ faces filled with relief.
“Ah… then who is it?”
“They said it is a Constellation that still needs to learn.”
“Needs to learn…?”
“Yes. Someone who will become a Constellation in the future. The Baby Constellation.”
At Illys’s words the officials burst into soft exclamations.
“Ah! The Baby Constellation!”
“Oh… a Baby Constellation! Just thinking about it is so adorable.”
Illys smiled faintly.
“That’s right. This one will someday become a star somewhere else, far in the future. So right now we are doing something enormous—we are teaching the one who will become a future star.”
The officials’ eyes went wide at her words.
One administrative official asked in a trembling voice.
His hands were neatly folded, and his eyes held a mixture of awe and excitement.
“May we… truly dare to teach a Constellation?”
Illys smiled.
“It’s all right. This is a request from the Constellation of the Creator. The Baby Constellation is still young, so they said our help would be useful.”
“Ohh, I see.”
Small gasps of wonder rose here and there.
Illys spoke to the officials once more.
“We need help not only from all of you, but from many others as well. They say it’s best for them to learn about the world by talking with many people.”
The officials now understood why she had summoned them.
“So we should gather the territory’s citizens?”
“That’s right. I’d like people rich in wisdom.”
One official raised a hand.
“But there is only one Holy Relic, is there not? How will the others converse with the Baby Constellation?”
Illys smiled.
“I did study abroad at the Magic Tower, you know.”
Blue light bloomed at her fingertips.
The light spun through the air, drawing a small magic circle.
“First, I will create communication tablets linked to the Holy Relic. It’s a method used a lot at the Magic Tower when distributing work to lower-ranking mages. In the meantime, all of you go gather the territory’s citizens.”
“What should we set as the work conditions for the citizens?”
“The work is educating the Baby Constellation. Tell them the pay will be the same amount of food given to the semiconductor workers.”
“Understood.”
The next day.
I installed a splitter on the large TV and the computer.
I connected the smartphone to the splitter with a USB-C cable, and the splitter itself linked to both the TV and the computer.
Now I could watch on the big TV while keeping the computer and smartphone in sync at the same time.
“Much easier to look at now.”
I surveyed the Nano World through the large television screen.
Between the inner and outer walls of the Castle of the Creator, in a place where the sunlight fell warm, several elderly people had gathered beneath a fruit tree.
They held stone tablets in their hands.
Faint light shimmered across the tablets, and something like small sentences was being etched upon them.
I touched the smartphone screen.
Swipe, swipe.
I adjusted the viewing angle until I was looking at one old man’s tablet.
The shape on the stone.
( ˶˙ᵕ˙˶ )
It seemed the AI was using emoticons to express its feelings.
Speech worked, but writing did not always get through.
Emoticons could convey emotion intuitively, so they looked like a good way for the AI and the nano-people to communicate.
Besides, this was a hard world to make a living in, and the illiteracy rate was said to be fairly high.
Even if the AI learned the local writing system, many of the people here would still be unable to read it.
A voice drifted out from the tablet.
“An apple fell from a tree. So I am hungry. Formula derivation that one becomes hungry when an apple falls. Derivation is fighting. Wanna fight me?”
Ah. Of course, the Nano AI still had a long way to go.
Even I couldn’t make sense of that sentence.
“Heh heh. Still a little child, I see.”
The shape on the tablet changed, and a voice followed.
ヽ(°〇°)ﾉ
“Am I a child?”
The old man smiled and lightly tapped the stone tablet.
“It’s all right. Let’s learn one thing at a time.”
His voice was warm, and the shape on the tablet glowed softly in response, as if answering him.
( •̀_•́ )ゞ
From that day on, people carrying stone tablets began to appear one after another throughout the Castle of the Creator.
Thousands, then tens of thousands of people looked at the stone slabs and held conversations.
Through them, the AI learned new words day after day.