AI Debate Tournament (2)
Manager Jang explained.
"Chairman Oh's side is asking what further proof of reconciliation and goodwill they could offer beyond sending their son. He has a daughter as well, but he was worried that sending her might make things far too awkward for us, so he sent his son instead."
Holy crap.
At least the man still had a shred of common sense.
If he'd sent his daughter, there was no way I would have accepted her.
Ugh.
How on earth would I have been supposed to treat her without the whole thing becoming a nightmare of social pressure?
Manager Jang looked at me.
"What should we do? Accept him? Or turn him down?"
Hmm.
What to do.
But thinking about the electronics company president last time, and the way these conglomerates operated in general, it seemed like none of them had any interest in developing technology. They just wanted to win through connections.
If you ran an electronics company, shouldn't you be grinding away at tech no matter what?
What was with all the blind-date proposals and sending over sons?
Of course, if I thought about it for a second, America wasn't any different. The moment I said I was going to Caltech, a parade of big tech CEOs had come scurrying over asking if I wanted to grab a beer—and it was for exactly the same reason.
All they had to do was develop world-class LPU and HBM like I had.
Was that really so hard?
Well…
Then again, without the Nano World—without Illys—I probably never would have escaped being a used smartphone repair guy myself.
Hmm.
Looked at that way, maybe I was riding the connection train too.
My connections just happened to be the Nano World and Illys.
Once I finished turning that over and admitted I was enjoying the benefits of connections myself, the answer came easily.
"Accept him."
You're riding connections.
I'm riding connections.
And from one business owner's perspective to another's, there was no real reason to flat-out kick away a son being offered as a peace gesture when you never knew how the relationship might develop later.
Of course, if it had been the daughter, that would have been a hard no.
"Understood. We'll take Chairman Oh's son in. What rank should we give him?"
"How old is he? Any experience?"
"Twenty-seven. He graduated college and has one year of intern experience."
I thought for a moment, then told Manager Jang,
"Then tell him he's interning here too."
Twenty-seven was basically a kid.
In today's corporate world, twenty-seven was still wet behind the ears.
Well. Older than me, of course.
The next day.
Manager Jang knocked and came into the CEO's office. A young man followed him in as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
A neat shirt, trousers without a single crease, and a short, no-nonsense haircut.
His first impression was clean. At least on the outside, there was none of that swagger you usually saw from chaebol heirs in dramas.
"Chairman Oh's son?"
"Yes. My name is Oh Ju-won."
The young man greeted me with perfect courtesy.
I looked him over and smiled.
"So you're a parachute hire."
At that single line, the young man's pupils wavered for just a fraction of a second.
"You do understand this company has nothing to do with Ohsung, right?"
"Yes. Of course."
Wait. Actually, we did have something to do with them.
"Ah, right. We do have a connection, come to think of it. Give me a second."
I pulled up a few online articles on my computer and turned the screen toward him.
They were all articles documenting the last clash between Ohsung Electronics and JH.
Hmm.
Looking at them again like this, it really was pretty galling.
Selling us products to our faces while running dirty tricks behind our backs.
I glanced from the articles to Chairman Oh's son. He flinched.
Given the sins Ohsung had racked up, he seemed a little rattled.
I asked him,
"You going to be okay with that?"
Still, Chairman Oh's son had some backbone. He answered with confidence.
"Yes. I'm here precisely to apologize for that, and as a token of reconciliation and cooperation between our two companies. I'll do my utmost."
"You're fine starting at intern rank?"
"Yes. I was an intern before as well."
"Good. Then from now on, photocopies and water cooler refills are Intern Oh's job. That work for you?"
A confident expression.
"Of course. Not just copies and water duty—assign me anything."
"Emptying the trash cans is on the list too. Still okay?"
"Yes. I'll do my best."
"Coffee, tea, instant coffee mix, paper cups, tissues—checking and restocking all consumables. Receiving, sorting, and delivering every package and piece of mail that arrives at the company, plus outbound shipping. Booking and setting up meeting rooms. Checking laptop and projector connections. Tidying shared desks, shredding documents, grinding through spreadsheet data entry, organizing receipts and vouchers, merging files from team members and doing the first pass for typos and formatting errors, updating the contact database… still okay?"
"…Yes. That's fine."
"Ah, right. I heard the AI team leader has been sleeping at the office lately. On a folding cot. Intern Oh up for that too?"
Intern Oh's face seemed to go a shade paler.
"O…of course."
Well, if he said he could handle it.
I looked at Manager Jang.
"Work him hard under you."
"Understood. I'll run him into the ground."
I more or less dumped the ashen-faced son of Chairman Oh onto Manager Jang.
It was time to head to Caltech for the AI debate tournament.
"Manager Jang."
"Yes."
"We've got to go to America."
"How should we put the team together?"
"Leave only the essential people behind, and take anyone who wants to come."
"Understood."
America.
The outskirts of LA.
A substantial portion of the company's staff, myself included, arrived at Caltech.
Same as with CES—whenever we went on overseas trips, I brought along everyone whose schedule allowed it.
Traveling abroad together broadened people's horizons and raised their loyalty to the company.
Money worries?
When you sold LPU modules, the operating margin was absurdly high.
Almost ninety percent.
The financial statements were so ridiculous we couldn't even make them public.
When calculating net profit, the single most important factor was literally the tax bill.
In manufacturing, a nine percent operating margin—not ninety—was already considered a solid win. Most manufacturers were lucky to hit five percent.
But our company was printing a ninety percent operating margin, which meant we had effectively achieved economic freedom as a corporation.
Even individual financial freedom was hard enough—and our company had secured it at the company level.
Anyone who wants to go to America!
Me!
Yeah, everyone's coming.
That kind of thing had become possible.
With this many people traveling overseas, nearly twenty security personnel stuck close at all times.
I said to Manager Jang,
"So this is Caltech."
In the distance, red-tiled roofs sat neatly arranged like a movie set. Wide lawns dotted with palm trees. Small groups chatting here and there.
"The campus is really beautiful."
"It is. I'd heard Caltech was relatively compact for a famous American university, but seeing it in person, the campus has real charm."
Even the air felt different. A little dry, and warmly pleasant.
"What's the schedule for today?"
"Starting tomorrow, there are two days of seminars. Multiple presentation sessions are lined up. Then on day three is the AI debate tournament."
"Tournament's on day three, then."
"Yes. But we need to start setting up today. Team Leader Gong from the AI team will take the lead on setup, and you, sir, have a gathering scheduled for this evening."
"Ah, the chicken-and-beer meetup?"
Manager Jang smiled contentedly.
"Yes. Leave the tedious setup to the staff. You need to be mingling with the heavyweights."
"True—everyone else is a heavyweight except me."
Joke. Aaron. Wilson.
Each of them was a multi-hundred-trillion-won kind of rich—rich among the rich.
I'd said I was treating for chicken and beer today, but even as the words left my mouth I wondered if this situation made any sense.
Even if our company had achieved economic freedom, I was still nowhere near these people.
People with hundreds of trillions seemed to go beyond personal financial freedom and corporate financial freedom—they unlocked the freedom of imagination itself.
Aaron's imagination of going to Mars. Joke's imagination of building the metaverse.
Once you piled up that much wealth, it looked like you even got the freedom to turn imagination into reality.
Still, no matter how rich a tycoon was, chicken was still going to taste good.
"Is that the space they allocated to us?"
Caltech had given us a lecture hall and an outdoor area. The event started tomorrow, but the setup had to be done in advance.
I watched Team Leader Gong work for a little while. Computers were already being installed throughout the lecture hall assigned to us.
I asked him,
"This is the command center?"
"Yes. We're setting up the command side first. For the experience side, we'll put up tents and booths outside."
The actual AI computation ran out of the data center in Korea. But people still had to feed in strategy—how to approach a problem, where to allocate more processing, what to prioritize. And someone had to monitor how well the AI was grasping each problem situation.
The outdoor experience booths were for promoting our AI.
"Team Leader Gong, any word on how many cognition problems they're throwing at us?"
"No. Nothing official yet. But the rumor is that last year they put out ten thousand cognition questions, and this year they're planning at least a million."
"A million questions?"
"Yes. AI has advanced, so they want it solving that many more problems."
"I see. Are people allowed to help?"
"Yes, it's allowed. But when cognition problems come in batches of a million, a few people helping won't make any difference. Unless you had tens of thousands of people on it, maybe."
"Huh? So if tens of thousands of people jumped on it, that would actually help the competition?"
"Yes. In theory, it would."
I thought for a moment.
Should I ask the Nano World for a little help?
Team Leader Gong narrowed his eyes at the look on my face.
"Sir, don't tell me… you're planning to recruit part-timers by the ten thousand?"
"Come on. Of course not. That's not it. Just set aside one separate computer for me that I can connect on my own during the tournament."
"Yes. Understood."
I left the tournament setup to Team Leader Gong and headed to the meeting place.
Of all foreign cities, LA had the largest Korean population—and because of that, it had a lot of Korean restaurants.
Even a franchise chicken place I visited often back in Korea had a branch in LA.
When I opened the door, the familiar smell of fried chicken hit me.
"Welcome."
They even greeted me in Korean.
I claimed a table and waited a little, and the heavyweights started arriving one by one.
"Joke, you made it?"
"Jiho, long time no see. Great to see you."
Joke beamed. He was still only in his thirties—young for a world-class tycoon.
"What about the others?"
"They're on their way."
"How have you been, Jiho?"
"Busy making things. Built the LPU modules, put up the data center, and now we've even made an AI—so we're here at Caltech to show it off."
"An AI from JH? I'm so curious. How is it? Does the cognition actually work?"
"Cognition?"
"Yeah. Can it recognize even the ambiguous images?"
I'd heard the metaverse company had built something called Camel AI, but from Joke's questions, it sounded like Camel AI wasn't great at recognizing objects.
Ours treated object recognition as a baseline, and its understanding of human emotion hit ninety percent.
"It recognizes what it needs to."
"I see. Well, we'll find out at the tournament. I'm really looking forward to JH's AI."
Right then the chicken shop door opened and Wilson Hwang and Aaron walked in.
Wilson was in jeans and a black leather jacket. Aaron wore a gray suit and came bouncing in with a little rhythm in his step, as if he couldn't contain how good a mood he was in.
"Wilson Hwang, you made it."
"Jiho, Joke. Long time."
"Aaron Merks hyung, good to see you too."
"Yeah. Good to see you."
And then chicken-and-beer time began.
Chicken landed on the table, and beer glasses clinked.
Wilson Hwang asked,
"Jiho, Joke. How's your AI coming along?"
Joke sighed.
"Ah… ours is a little weird."
"That Camel thing?"
"That's the one. I think we named it wrong. Being a camel, it doesn't catch what you say very well."
"AI isn't easy."
Wilson Hwang rolled his beer glass as he spoke.
"Still, you're young, Joke. It was the same when I was in Yongsan in the nineties. I thought we were all going under. We worked our asses off making GPUs and nobody bought them. If I'd given up then, there'd be no Mvidia today."
I asked, genuinely curious,
"Wilson, you were in Yongsan for a long time in the nineties?"
Wilson drained a long pull of beer and said,
"Half my life was made by Yongsan. Without Yongsan and the PC bangs, Mvidia as it is now never would have existed. We'd have gone under long ago."
Wilson's gaze drifted off into the distance, as if he were looking at the scenery of that time.