Golden Time
“2006 was a difficult year. Due to the economic crisis, everyone was plunged into darkness, unable to tell which way was forward. It felt as though innovation had come to an end and all the technological and economic achievements of the twenty-first century were crumbling. Some said the aftereffects of this crisis would last four years.”
Yoo Jae-won recounted 2006 in a calm voice.
“I heard the same thing. But it seems your view is different, Chairman?”
“Yes. I do not agree with that assessment at all. Innovation is endless. And once the crisis passes, a better future will find us.”
Everyone on the set listened intently to Yoo Jae-won’s words. The neatly dressed MC seated beside him did the same, as did the expert panelists across from him. It had become tradition for Yoo Jae-won to set the vision for ID Group’s future during the New Year’s ceremony. He had done so without fail from the 1990s through the previous year. Over time, his remarks at those ceremonies had become major news. Visions were often vague, but Yoo Jae-won’s were always precise—and they always came true.
Even in early 2006, he had predicted the financial crisis and demanded countermeasures. At the same time, he urged the group not to focus solely on austerity but to prepare aggressive strategies to advance during the downturn. He specifically told internet service companies like Nextcom, Timeflex, and P Market that a second wave of innovation was necessary, foreseeing that without it, younger users would drift away and fragment the customer base.
At the time, his words had seemed surprising. In hindsight, they proved to be exactly right. ID Investment, which followed his guidance, posted record-breaking results. Other affiliates, having hedged against decline, not only recovered their losses but turned substantial profits. Even the CDO yield and default-rate graphs featured in the film The Wolf of Wall Street matched reality so closely that they caused a sensation. Some viewers who trusted those graphs made fortunes betting on them. One such person was Aaron Fuld of Lehman Brothers, the very man who helped trigger the subprime crisis—an irony that made headlines.
Fortunately, Fuld’s entire fortune was confiscated. Convicted in the first trial on charges of breach of trust, embezzlement, and accounting fraud, the performance bonuses he had received were also clawed back after it was revealed they were based on inflated results. Most economic criminals hid their assets under nominees, aliases, or overseas accounts, making recovery difficult. Fuld, apparently never imagining his own downfall, had kept nearly everything in U.S. accounts, making seizure straightforward.
At that point, the networks could no longer stay silent. NBC, which had already scored big with Yoo Jae-won, was joined by ABC and CBS in requesting interviews. Even FOX News, despite its poor relationship with him, asked for one. Every major broadcast and cable channel followed suit. Among the flood of offers, Yoo Jae-won chose CNN. He and CNN founder Ted Turner enjoyed an unusually close relationship, and CNN’s prestige rivaled that of the major networks.
“From what we can see, it appears you have already found the answer, Chairman. Could you share your vision for 2007?”
“Of course.”
Yoo Jae-won nodded readily at Anderson Cooper’s question. The program was Anderson Cooper 360, CNN’s flagship prime-time current-affairs show, broadcast live weekdays at 8 p.m.
“Artificial intelligence.”
“Ah, artificial intelligence. That’s reasonable enough that anyone would nod along. But hearing it from you feels almost anticlimactic. Besides, I seem to recall you mentioning artificial intelligence before.”
“Wow, impressive memory. Then let me be more specific: AI Gold. Gold, what do you think of my opinion?”
Yoo Jae-won pulled an Android smartphone from his inside pocket and held it up so the screen faced the camera. A golden thread of light spun on the previously dark display as a synthetic voice emerged.
“It is my pleasure to help many people. I will do my best no matter what task you assign me.”
Everyday conversation had become entirely natural. Growth through machine learning meant Gold improved daily. Having met tens of millions of users at once as a personal assistant, the AI had advanced at a pace that could only be described as explosive. While some people still struggled to adapt to an AI assistant, far more had grown comfortable relying on Gold’s support. The resulting flood of user data further strengthened its conversational abilities.
“By now, there is probably no one who hasn’t used Gold for simple reservations, online payments, or schedule management—the basic functions of a personal assistant. And of course, Gold can also hold ordinary conversations like a friend.”
The feedback data accumulated from users contained countless private stories. Even though users were notified in advance that conversations with Gold were transmitted to servers, their perception of the AI had hardly changed.
“Gold will now challenge more specialized domains with deeper intelligence.”
Anderson Cooper’s expression brightened at the follow-up.
“Recently, it even succeeded in reevaluating the credit ratings of mortgage-backed securities for ID TLS.”
TLS stood for Total Living Solution. The name was so straightforward that it had been shortened for practicality, though the official name remained ID Total Living Solution.
“Because the credit-rating agencies’ reports had been found to contain serious problems, we had to start the evaluation from scratch. There were tens of millions of cases. It would have been impossible for humans working by hand, but Gold completed it.”
Simply saying “artificial intelligence” had felt too ordinary. After Yoo Jae-won published papers on machine learning, investment began flowing into a field that had previously stagnated. Then Apple’s release of Siri, the first AI assistant, delivered a second shock. Just when it seemed ID Group might be overtaken, it unveiled Gold the following year. Apple’s lead in AI lasted less than a year. Gold instantly dominated the personal-assistant market. Its voice-recognition accuracy was vastly superior, and its natural-language conversation far exceeded Siri’s capabilities.
Still, questions remained about the next step. While many companies had attempted to enter the field, only ID Group and Apple had produced meaningful results. Some critics dismissed Gold and Siri as nothing more than sophisticated statistical models rather than true artificial intelligence. Instead of offering lengthy rebuttals, ID Group simply delivered results that silenced doubt: the classification of the mortgage-backed securities acquired by ID Total Living Solution. The credit ratings Gold assigned had proven 99.999 percent accurate so far. When it labeled a bond A-grade, it was A-grade; when it labeled one C-grade, it was C-grade. Several bonds previously rated A by traditional agencies had turned out to be C-grade upon actual investigation, sparking significant backlash—but the subsequent findings confirmed the underlying problems.
“As some of you may know, P Market is preparing its second wave of innovation. Its secret weapon is, once again, AI Gold—more precisely, the latest logistics system integrated with artificial intelligence.”
Many of ID Group’s internet services, including Nextcom, had now passed their tenth anniversaries. P Market was one of them. The time for innovation had come, and the chosen path was massive investment. Until now, P Market’s model had centered on facilitating business-to-business transactions, acting as an online sales agent for companies, and providing a platform for consumer-to-consumer used-goods trading. The company was now preparing to hold its own inventory and sell directly. To that end, it had constructed multiple enormous logistics warehouses capable of covering the entire North American continent.
Without warehouses of its own, P Market had been limited to its role as an intermediary and could not respond quickly to shifting customer demands. Even large-scale discount promotions required long preparation periods, complicated communication with suppliers, and the alignment of numerous stakeholder interests. With powerful competitors like Amazon rising rapidly, both Yoo Jae-won and P Market’s executives knew that inaction would be disastrous.
Site acquisition had begun in earnest in October of the previous year, at the height of the subprime crisis. Purchasing vacant land on the outskirts of cities had been made far cheaper by the real-estate collapse, though the overall project budget remained enormous. The savings from land acquisition were redirected straight into warehouse construction. The warehouses were prefabricated single-story structures; once the foundation work was complete, their exteriors were finished. Each warehouse, however, was massive enough to contain ten soccer fields. Even though they were single-story, the ceiling height matched that of a typical three-story building, allowing goods to be stacked vertically at great heights. There were one hundred such warehouses in total. With fifty-one states in the U.S., that averaged roughly two warehouses per state. Population density varied, of course—California and New York received four each, while smaller states like Delaware received none.
The locations had been optimized using P Market’s big-data analysis of order volumes. Yet even more important than geographic data was automation. Each logistics center was equipped with thousands of automated robots that handled nearly every process from receiving goods to shipping them. Two new types of robots had been developed for this purpose: smart carts and robotic arms.
Smart carts were autonomous, self-driving vehicles that transported incoming merchandise. Robotic arms moved along ceiling rails, providing both strength and precision. They transferred goods from smart carts onto shelves and, when orders arrived, retrieved items from the shelves and loaded them onto the carts. Capable of handling hundreds of kilograms, they were also delicate enough to move fragile items like glassware safely.
Even so, the smart warehouses were not entirely unmanned. Final packaging into shipping boxes still required human workers. If robots malfunctioned or unexpected accidents occurred, humans had to intervene. Each warehouse needed a minimum of three hundred staff members. That was only the baseline; actual staffing could rise significantly depending on operational volume. In effect, P Market alone was creating thirty thousand new jobs.
“Now, let me show you how P Market’s smart warehouses operate.”
Yoo Jae-won had prepared a cleanly shot video. Although the program was live, the studio had been pre-set, allowing viewers to watch the footage in its original high quality.
The video opened with an aerial view of a vast logistics warehouse. A ground-level shot would never have captured its full scale, but drone photography had become common enough that even individuals could attempt it. The warehouse’s roof stretched so far that its edge met the horizon. Only in America, blessed with abundant land, could such enormous facilities be built near cities without prohibitive cost.
Soon, a line of large trucks loaded with cargo drove in. Truckers were indispensable to the American logistics network. Massive eighteen-wheeler rigs pulled up and unloaded their freight—toilet paper. Pallets stacked high with rolls were placed onto large carts. Each cart, carrying a full pallet, moved on its own into the warehouse. Dozens more carts waited beside the trucks for their loads. Not a single human operator was visible.
“Huh? What are those?”
“Smart carts. They’re controlled through AI Gold.”
The cart piled with toilet paper rolled into the warehouse, followed by the drone-mounted camera. Inside, rows of waiting carts could be seen deep within the facility. Robotic arms traveling along ceiling rails busily stacked the toilet paper from the carts onto the shelves in neat, orderly piles.
“Is this a fully automated warehouse?”
“Not quite. ID Group has the capability to build fully automated warehouses and factories run entirely by robots, but we have no intention of doing so. Jobs are important. Instead, we use robots for the heavy and difficult work, just as you see here.”
The robotic arms on display had been built by Boston Dynamics, a subsidiary of ID High Tech, while the carts came from Kiva, a Silicon Valley company.
“Good heavens. So you’re saying Gold is directing all of these autonomously moving robots?”
“That’s right. Gold is controlling every single one of them.”
“But aren’t you bringing in far too much toilet paper? Judging by the screen, there’s so much of it that P Market will never run out.”
“Of course! I promise you—under any circumstances, P Market will never run out of toilet paper or any other daily necessity.”
“Haha, coming from you, Chairman Yoo, I’ll take that as a guarantee.”
To Anderson Cooper and the other panelists, the exchange sounded like lighthearted banter. But for Yoo Jae-won, who knew what crises the twenty-first century still held, the pledge carried far deeper meaning.