AI Developer
♬
6:30 a.m.
A melody echoed through the tiny five-pyeong studio apartment.
[Wake Up]
"Haa...."
Another day had begun.
The same routine, over and over.
"Alright. Let's do this."
The disheveled face in the bathroom mirror forced a smile.
Shhh—
A shower and some toothpaste woke up his still-drowsy brain. While drying his hair, he turned on the TV, and the seven o'clock morning news began.
— Good morning. This is the October 1st, 7 a.m. news. The sweltering heat has finally eased, and a pleasant autumn breeze is blowing....
The first story after the anchor's greeting was about an incident.
— At 3:30 a.m. today, a C-rank Gate that appeared in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi Province, failed to be cleared, resulting in a Dungeon Break. Hunter troops were urgently deployed. Here are the details.
— The Hunter Army's A-Force 2nd Battalion, led by Lieutenant Colonel Na Hanyeol, was dispatched to suppress the Dungeon Break. All residents have been evacuated, and thanks to the swift response of the Hunter troops, the situation is expected to be contained soon. However, civilian damages are currently estimated at around 48.2 billion won, requiring additional recovery and support.
— Regarding this Dungeon Break, public criticism is mounting against the major Hunter guilds for their selfishness in failing to act proactively until the situation worsened this badly....
It wasn't the first time. Or even the second.
The story was all too familiar.
Hunter guilds were, after all, private for-profit organizations. Some of the larger ones had even become corporations, managed to maximize shareholder profits. These companies, classified under the Hunter industry, currently accounted for 18% of South Korea's GDP.
The era of the great Hunter industry had arrived.
— .... The 'Hunter Guild Public Service Obligation Act,' previously proposed by former Minjung Party leader Kim Hangu and rejected, is being reevaluated, with public opinion suggesting it was ahead of its time. His presidential approval rating has risen by 3.3 percentage points....
"Tch. Same old, same old."
The news always circled back to politics in the end.
He clicked his tongue and turned off the TV, then stepped out of the studio apartment.
The morning autumn sunlight mixed with the smell of sewage, distant car horns, and the occasional wail of police or ambulance sirens.
This was Seoul, the heart of South Korea.
"Good morning."
"Room 302, the October rent hasn't come in yet?"
The landlord, who had been sweeping the parking lot, started nagging about money the moment he saw him.
That grumpy expression.
He was obviously just fishing. He probably hadn't even checked.
A quick look at his smartphone confirmed that the 500,000 won rent had been automatically withdrawn yesterday evening. His balance now stood at 430,000 won....
"Check again. It was transferred."
"Really? Next time, send it on time, before the due date."
He had sent it on time. The transfer date was September 30th.
Irritation flared for a moment, but getting upset would only hurt him. He quickly converted the frustration into motivation.
I'll make a ton of money soon and get out of this dump.
"Yes, yes. Have a good one."
He gave a half-hearted reply, popped in his Bluetooth earphones, and just then—whether by coincidence or not—his mother called.
"Hello?"
— Doosik, are you studying hard?
"Yeah, I'm on my way to the academy."
— You remember Jinsoo from next door, right? Jinsoo. You were in the same class in middle school.
Of course he remembered Kim Jinsoo.
That born thug.
The money he'd extorted from him back in middle school could've covered at least a month's rent.
"Yeah. Why are you asking about him all of a sudden?"
— I ran into his mom this morning. Turns out Jinsoo awakened and became a Hunter. He joined some big guild—Babylon or something? I forget the name.
"Babylon?"
A major corporation.
— Oh, right, right. Babylon. She said he's making a fortune there. Hundreds of millions a year in salary. So his mom just signed a contract to deliver 300,000 won worth of Yakult every month. Isn't that amazing? The world's so small, huh?
His mother was what people called a Yakult auntie. These days they went by "Fresh Manager," but the point was, ever since his father had lost his fingers in an accident while working as an interior carpenter, she had been the real breadwinner of the family for the past six years.
But for some reason, her cheerful voice grated on him today.
— When are you coming home? Should I grill some meat for you?
"I don't know. I'm busy these days."
— Busy with what? You can study computers at home. We have a computer, and I even bought you a laptop.
"It's job-hunting season. I'll come after I get a job."
— ...Is that so? Alright. Study hard!
"Okay."
— My son, fighting! Stay positive!
"Yeah."
[Call Ended]
The moment he hung up, regret hit him.
He'd been too curt.
His mom had probably called just to feel good about talking to her son.
Still, what could he do when it pissed him off?
Kim Jinsoo, that thug who couldn't study for shit and would've been expelled for school violence these days, had gotten lucky. He awakened....
And worst of all, it was Babylon Co., Ltd.
The very company he was grinding away at coding to join.
A Hunter guild that had sunk its roots deeper into the IT industry than into Gate raids.
They operated the Hunter community platform HuntRed. It handled party matching, equipment trading, casual chats, tip sharing, and even real-time streaming. By restricting membership to awakened individuals only, they fueled the awakened's sense of privilege and built a steady revenue stream.
That thug Kim Jinsoo had probably waltzed into that major corporation on nothing but luck.
"This goddamn luck-based world. Fuck."
His resolve to start the day on a good note had already crumbled by 8 a.m., just an hour and a half later.
He was crammed into a packed bus at the crack of dawn, while that bastard Jinsoo was probably cruising around in a foreign car on a salary of hundreds of millions.
Ha. He wanted to awaken too.
Everyone on this suffocating bus was probably starting their day with the same thought.
The era of 100,000 awakened in South Korea.
Even though HuntRed only had 100,000 premium members, its popular posts racked up tens of millions of views. The fact that non-awakened people couldn't even comment was proof of how much they envied the awakened lifestyle.
While complaints about this unfair society often appeared on general forums, the awakened merely scoffed. They lived in an entirely different world. Without the awakened, this world would've collapsed long ago. That sense of privilege made them feel honorable.
In a way, the discrimination and privilege here were even worse than the class divide between nobles and commoners in the Middle Ages.
Complaining wouldn't change anything.
You just endured the bullshit and kept living.
Praying every single day to awaken.
Hoping for a good rank, if possible.
Even... C-rank would be enough.
"Haa...."
Sighs occasionally drifted through the morning commute bus.
Sometimes his turn came around. And today was that day.
People poured out at Gangnam Exit 1 after crossing the bridge from Gangbuk.
He was swept along with the crowd.
They scattered into the forest of skyscrapers whose owners no one knew.
He, too, had a destination.
[DM Building]
[4F Gangnam Genius Coding Academy]
A six-month AI boot camp course. Originally 12 million won, discounted to 8.35 million.
His mom's salary was around 25 million.... What an unfilial son.
The thought made him regret being curt on the phone again.
"Let's hang in there."
No matter how hard or difficult it was, he had to keep pushing forward.
Eventually, an opportunity would come.
It was what his father used to say before he lost his fingers.
If there was something he could do, all he had to do was keep doing it with everything he had.
At least he wouldn't lose his fingers from coding. Think positive.
He sat in the front row of the classroom, opened his laptop, filled his tumbler with cold water, and did a bit of review before class began.
"Alright, everyone. Today we'll cover the basics of deep learning and neural networks. You've already learned the fundamental concepts of machine learning and built simple models, right? Deep learning is a subfield of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks to solve more complex problems."
......
The chapter in the textbook was about the basics of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). It was ironic to learn coding from a book, but fortunately, he had quite a talent for it, along with good comprehension and application skills. Above all, he enjoyed the immersion that came with coding.
It was the first time he'd found something he could do for the rest of his life.
'Doosik, being able to sit in front of a computer for hours playing games is also a talent. Not many people can concentrate like that. Why don't you try studying computers?'
'Mom! I was just taking a break from studying by playing a bit, and now you're nagging again?'
'Eight hours is a break? Mom's heading to work! Make sure you eat!'
Mom had been right.
If he'd listened to her, he could've shaved off four years.
He pushed away the stray thoughts to focus on class.
......
"I think that's enough theory for now. Shall we try building an actual deep learning model? The tools we'll use are TensorFlow and Keras. Keras is a high-level deep learning library that runs on TensorFlow, making it very easy to implement neural networks."
Theory was quickly covered, followed by hands-on practice with the deep learning framework.
They were given coding assignments in Python.
While everyone else hesitated to start, his fingers moved swiftly.
......
model = models.Sequential()
model.add(layers.Dense(128, activation='relu', input_shape=(784,)))
model.add(layers.Dense(64, activation='relu'))
model.add(layers.Dense(10, activation='softmax'))
......
All that review and preview had paid off.
After some time, a faint fig tree scent brushed past his nose, and the instructor's voice followed.
"Wow... As expected from the morning class ace. Doosik, could you explain the code?"
"Huh?"
He was caught off guard, but there was a reason for the request.
"You know how important code reviews are in the industry, right?"
"Ah, yes. Yes. Well... This is a basic neural network model with three layers. The first layer has 128 nodes using the ReLU activation function. The second has 64 nodes, and the final output layer is for predicting 10 classes......"
It flowed smoothly.
Explaining the code he'd written was no trouble at all.
The instructor seemed satisfied.
She looked about his age, yet she was the teacher and he the student.
"That's really impressive. Doosik, you won't have any trouble getting a job, will you? You might even be better than me."
"Nah, you're exaggerating, Teach."
"It's not flattery, it's true. Especially when you're focused—you look like you could suck people in. Like a black hole."
"Haha, thanks."
"Why didn't you major in computer science? You really have talent."
He'd graduated with a degree in public administration.
Why? Because he hadn't known what he wanted to do, so he'd aimed for the civil service exam.
Stable, and if he just coasted along, maybe he'd buy a house and get married someday?
Maybe his head had been messed up, but he'd spent three years preparing for the exam before giving up.
"Rubbing salt on such a painful wound."
"Ah, sorry. Hehe."
"If you're sorry, how about grabbing a coffee after class?"
It was half-joking, half-serious.
But the atmosphere turned awkward.
The line had been good. Or had it?
Was it too out of the blue?
The instructor mumbled, "Ah, well...." and avoided his gaze, ending class instead.
"Since we've built a basic neural network model today, next time we'll compare the models you've created. We'll also cover CNNs, which excel at image processing. Make sure to review!"
Tch.
Life was hard....