Gold's Phenomenal Success
The AI assistant Gold, the star of the Prometheus Project at IDDC 2005, had become a massive hit. It wasn't mere marketing exaggeration—the data confirmed it.
"Though it's dipped a little from a few days ago, we're still getting over 120,000 queries per minute."
Gilbert's excited voice came through the ID Talk video meeting, showing no signs of settling down. That was only natural—Gilbert was an S-class talent who had played a major role in developing the AI assistant.
To support Gold's general-purpose service, dedicated servers had to be built, and Gilbert's expertise in distributed processing system design proved invaluable. If the AI assistant's performance materialized in the year-end settlement, a hefty bonus was practically guaranteed.
"Gold's holding up fine, right?"
"Of course! It even handled that insane traffic on launch day!"
"That's expected. I'm talking about the answer accuracy rate."
"Yeah! It's maintaining over 80 percent. The remaining 20 percent failures are mostly because users' environments don't support Gold properly—wrong answers are extremely rare!"
As Gilbert said, Gold's explosive success stemmed from its terrifying accuracy rate. Its voice recognition alone already surpassed competitors by a wide margin. Once commands were input, Gold executed them almost flawlessly. ID Group didn't stop there—it went one step further by targeting users' personal preferences.
For example, when asked for food recommendations, any dishes the user disliked were filtered out from the start. More specifically, it would never suggest mint chocolate to someone who hated it. Of course, this level of preference targeting wasn't possible for every user right away. The highest accuracy came from people who had consistently used ID Group products from the Tiffany Phone era through the Android S5, actively engaging with all ID Group services.
Conversely, the less accumulated data there was, the more mechanical Gold's responses became. With rich data, Gold started with an almost perfect understanding of the user's tastes from the very first launch. When recommending music through Next Music, it would build playlists centered around the user's favorite artists. It even analyzed preferred styles to discover and suggest new artists the user had never heard before but would likely enjoy.
This wasn't limited to music—similar personalization happened across every aspect of daily life. That said, Gold wasn't unprepared for users with no accumulated data. While preference targeting based on user history was its biggest strength, its natural language ability and rapid learning capability also played key roles. When users gave clear feedback on Gold's answers, it remembered and reflected that in future conversations.
This required advanced language comprehension, and Gold's language learning had begun in the early 1990s and reached perfection by now. Apple, which caused a sensation with its AI assistant Siri in 2004, would feel deep frustration upon seeing Gold—the gap in capability was that vast.
However, there was a downside. Gold wasn't limited to the latest Android S5 or compatible devices of the same generation. Older models could also access it after upgrading their mobile OS. PCs, being all-purpose tools, could use it without any upgrades simply by visiting the website or downloading the PC version of Gold. This instantly created tens of millions of new users.
These massive numbers of users bombarded Gold with questions out of sheer curiosity, demanding enormous computational power from the servers. Yoo Jae-won hadn't asked Gilbert about server status for no reason. ID Technology had built dedicated servers for Gold's assistant service, delivering 35 exaflops of computational power—equivalent to one-tenth of ID Technology's entire cloud server system.
The silver lining was that CPU alone no longer determined cloud system performance. Since last year, GPUs had incorporated GPGPU technology for general-purpose computation acceleration, making it easy and fast to build the power needed for AI operations. A few years ago, millions of top-tier CPUs would have been required. Now, 600,000 CPUs paired with 2.4 million GPGPUs achieved 35 exaflops. In terms of physical scale alone, it had shrunk to roughly the size of a massive logistics warehouse.
However, each board unit in the cloud system cost over $80,000 due to the need for top-grade chips. This led ID Technology's major shareholders to admire the AI assistant Gold while questioning its profitability. If Yoo Jae-won had held all the company's shares alone as before, he would have been completely free from budget and cost concerns. After ID Technology's public listing, however, certain constraints emerged. There was now a board of directors, shareholder meetings, and disclosure obligations for major management decisions. While Yoo Jae-won's control remained unthreatened, the company had to fulfill its corporate responsibilities.
"How's the AdSense integration going?"
"Naturally, it's the best!"
Yoo Jae-won's countermeasure was precisely AdSense. ID Group's internet advertising platform, AdSense, functioned as an ad distribution service. It eliminated the need for advertisers to meet with companies individually or perform complicated calculations to verify ad effectiveness. Conversely, it removed the tedious legwork for internet service providers seeking ad contracts. Advertisers simply set their desired categories and times, while publishers, bloggers, and SNS users only needed to integrate the AdSense API.
The AI assistant Gold launched with AdSense integration already in place. When users requested searches or recommendations from Gold, matching keywords would appear in recommendation lists or displays. Of course, ads were clearly labeled as such per regulations, but users accepted Gold's recommendations without resistance.
"Look here—you can clearly see the difference before and after Gold integration!"
Gilbert displayed data from a pizza place called Zume Pizza in Silicon Valley. It was an ordinary pizzeria known for its pepperoni. What set it apart from nearby or franchise pizza shops was that it had placed ads on AdSense and integrated with N Pay. If someone near Silicon Valley asked Gold something like "Can you order pizza for me?" or "Know any good pizza places?", Gold would recommend this pizzeria first.
After Gold's official announcement, Zume Pizza's sales had noticeably increased. Most of the sales growth came from Gold's recommendations leading to N Pay delivery orders.
"The effect is so good it's almost a problem."
"Huh? Good is good, right? How can good be a problem?"
Balance was important in everything. While Gold's exceptional ad performance benefited AdSense, too much reliance on AdSense ads could harm Gold's credibility. Korean portal search bars and real-time trending lists had already turned into ad boards. If Gold's recommendations were perceived as advertisements, it would ultimately damage Gold itself. Maintaining moderation was essential for stable service.
"There is such a thing."
Since he couldn't explain it in detail to Gilbert, Yoo Jae-won wrapped it up vaguely.
"Huh?"
"Anyway, our Gold is definitely a huge success, right?"
Gilbert, on the other hand, seemed unconcerned and focused only on the word "success."
"Yeah. You can look forward to the year-end. Think about whether you'd prefer the black horse or the golden bull."
"Whoa! Am I getting a supercar too?!"
"That's right. Keep up the good work."
"Of course!!"
Gilbert on the monitor jumped up in excitement. It was understandable—Yoo Jae-won was referring to Ferrari and Lamborghini. Ferrari's symbol was a black horse on a yellow shield, while Lamborghini's was a golden bull on a black shield. ID Group was known for generously rewarding high performers. As a global company, it was also famous for faithfully paying taxes in Korea, the United States, Europe, and other countries where it operated. This set it apart from companies that established paper companies in tax havens like Iceland, the Caribbean, or Oceania to evade taxes.
When planning his master strategy before regressing, Yoo Jae-won had considered paper companies but ultimately discarded the idea. Given ID Group's market dominance across various businesses, controversies like the Google tax would likely arise far more intensely. In the worst case, antitrust laws could even apply. His choice was to pay taxes properly while prioritizing his family and employees first.
Thanks to this, watches and gold bars for long-serving employees were standard, and cars had become a tradition for top performers. The scale of achievement determined the car's class, with Ferrari and Lamborghini being the absolute pinnacle. No wonder Gilbert was thrilled.
"Oh! But does it have to be a Ferrari or Lamborghini?"
"Why? Do you prefer sedans? Then how about a Rolls-Royce or Bentley?"
"No! Those chairman cars feel too burdensome to drive! I want Lightning Bolt's Superfast! I saw it on the last day of IDDC and completely fell for it. After checking it out, it was exactly what I expected."
Indeed, for early adopters like Gilbert, the highest-performance electric car Superfast was more appealing than traditional supercars. Not just Gilbert—anyone interested in cars was showing great interest in Lightning Bolt's officially released vehicles.
"OK! Noted. But you know actual delivery might take over two years, right?"
"That's fine! No problem!"
Although Lightning Bolt had announced four electric vehicle models—from the entry-level Electronics Spear to the supercar-class Superfast—and begun taking reservations, production was still in its infancy. While a factory for supercar-class models like Superfast had been established in Korea, the plant for mass-produced mid-size models had only just broken ground. Even so, President Bolt confidently stated that delivery to reservation buyers would never exceed two years. Unlike internal combustion engine vehicles, electric cars had a much simpler structure.
After ending the video meeting with Gilbert, Yoo Jae-won picked up his smartphone.
"Hey, Gold."
"Yes, Jae-won."
At his call, golden threads rippled across the previously dark smartphone screen.
"Where would be a good place to build Lightning Bolt's mass-production car factory?"
The moment the question ended, golden dust scattered around the spinning golden threads, indicating Gold was thinking.
"I'm sorry. This question is too complex for me to provide appropriate assistance at this time. You have capable executives, so perhaps discussing it with them would be better."
"Hmm, got it."
As expected. Gold's intelligence and reasoning could handle everyday matters, but comparing diverse values or considering complex political variables was still beyond its reach. Still, the answer was quite reasonable. Simple conversations now flowed naturally. Moreover, suggesting he consult his executives was both prudent and appropriate.
Anyway, President Bolt of Lightning Bolt had spent over a decade researching electric vehicle mass production, and now it was bearing fruit. The battery issues that had plagued electric cars were largely resolved, and the self-driving features—which had made a huge impact from the start—had been significantly upgraded. Thus, on the final day of IDDC 2005, President Bolt announced four models ranging from the mid-size entry-level Electronics Spear to the supercar-level Superfast, and began accepting reservations.
It was an unexpected timing. No one had predicted a fully realized electric vehicle would appear at this point. Moreover, the prices were reasonable. The attention drawn by the AI assistant Gold's announcement naturally shifted toward Lightning Bolt's electric vehicles. Along with that, the location of Lightning Bolt's mass-production factory became a hot topic.
Local governments that recognized the potential offered all sorts of incentives to attract the factory. The administrative workload at Lightning Bolt was reportedly paralyzed just from responding to lobbying efforts. Thanks to this, President Bolt was accelerating the mass-production timeline ahead of schedule.
"Ah! Hey, Gold. Where would be a good place to build Lightning Bolt's mass-production car factory?"
Then Yoo Jae-won asked Gold the exact same question again.
"That was the question I just answered. Would you like me to repeat my response?"
Gold replied as if remembering the previous situation. Yoo Jae-won continued as if he had anticipated this answer.
"No! Switch to developer mode this time and recalculate."
While the retail version of Gold had time limits requiring answers within three seconds and caps on maximum computational power, developer mode allowed unlimited time and computational resources.