The Century's Challenge
“But this isn’t just a demonstration, is it?” Anderson asked, eyes wide with astonishment. “You’re saying the actual warehouses are already operating this way?”
Even a simple question carried a sharp edge when it came from him. His tall frame, the silver hair that had already begun to appear despite his youth, and the intensity in his gaze gave every word an unmistakable weight.
“You don’t seem convinced,” Yoo Jae-won replied with a calm smile. “Let me show you the proof. This is live footage from the site.”
He opened a browser on his smartphone and entered an address. The screen displayed one of the CCTV feeds from the California smart warehouse they had just seen in the pre-recorded video. Because the studio television was a Bordeaux TV from ID Electronics, he could instantly mirror the phone’s display for everyone to see.
“The earlier footage was edited and recorded,” Yoo Jae-won continued, “but this is live.”
Where the previous clip had shown robots rapidly stocking an empty warehouse with toilet paper, the live feed now revealed shelves roughly one-tenth full. An entire long rack was already packed with every grade of toilet paper, from the cheapest to the premium. The next rack was filled with hand sanitizer, and 2-liter bottles of water were being loaded at that very moment. Each six-pack weighed twelve kilograms, yet the robotic arms moved with effortless precision, placing them neatly on the shelves.
“Gold, would you have robotic arm 294 wave to us again?”
The arm marked 294 was the one closest to the camera feeding the studio.
—Of course, Chairman.
The moment Gold’s voice faded, the arm set down the water bottle it was holding. It glided along the ceiling rail toward the CCTV, drawing closer until its full form filled the frame, then waved cheerfully. That was not all. It even performed the American Sign Language gesture for “hello.”
“How about a V sign?”
—This V stands for victory!
The robotic arm possessed five articulated fingers, allowing remarkably delicate movements. This was the realization of the ubiquitous computing vision Yoo Jae-won had presented in the mid-1990s—anywhere there was an internet connection, such performances were now possible.
Anderson Cooper’s mouth fell open.
“Customers will feel the full impact of the smart warehouse system by the end of this year,” Yoo Jae-won said, hinting at the upcoming Black Friday promotions. Satisfied that the point had been made, he moved on.
“Gold’s potential is not limited to controlling large-scale robotic systems. There is an even more remarkable field where we expect extraordinary performance: medical imaging diagnostics.”
Interpreting images to diagnose a patient’s condition had become one of the fastest-growing areas of modern medicine. Beyond traditional X-rays, MRI and CT scans now allowed physicians to examine the body without invasive procedures. Yet the interpretation of those images remained problematic. The accuracy depended heavily on the individual radiologist’s skill. A skilled doctor might catch a disease early; a less experienced one might miss it entirely, allowing the condition to worsen.
“I see,” Anderson said. “Now that you mention it, this is exactly the kind of task Gold would excel at.”
While preparing for the interview, Anderson had studied ID Group extensively. With so many subsidiaries and diverse operations, the volume of material had been enormous, but the more he learned, the more fascinated he became. The same was true of Gold. Just when it seemed Apple’s Siri had finally caught up, ID Group had released Gold and surged ahead. Anderson suspected that, although they could have launched an AI assistant earlier than Apple, they had deliberately taken extra time to perfect its technical completeness. His analysis was accurate. They had ceded the title of “first” in voice recognition and natural language processing to Apple, but in return they had earned genuine user trust. That was why someone like Anderson could so readily say, “Gold could do it.”
“However,” Yoo Jae-won continued, “the stakes in specialized fields are on an entirely different level. If Gold successfully diagnoses early-stage colon or pancreatic cancer, that would be extraordinary. But if it fails, patients’ lives are at risk and treatment costs skyrocket.”
Yoo Jae-won was confident that once Gold began working in medical imaging, the rate of misdiagnosis would drop dramatically. While it would still need to learn from vast numbers of cases, the most critical element—the learning algorithm—already existed in his mind, having been validated in the field of diagnostic imaging. What remained was public trust. Only when people were willing to entrust even life-and-death matters to artificial intelligence could Gold enter medical imaging.
“That is why I intend to issue a challenge of the century right here.”
A challenge of the century? Anderson tilted his head. That line had not been in the rehearsal. Still, as a veteran anchor with over a decade at CNN, he adapted smoothly.
“A challenge of the century?”
“Baduk. Within three years, we will conquer Baduk.”
Anderson, who had been bracing for something spectacular, looked momentarily taken aback. After discussing medical imaging, he had expected the challenge to involve that field—perhaps a contest to detect diseases in thousands of X-ray images, ideally against the world’s leading medical experts. Instead, it was Baduk.
“You know what Baduk is, of course. Players place black and white stones to build territories and compete to see whose territory is larger. It is not merely about building; one can also obstruct or destroy the opponent’s territory. Unlike chess, every stone in Baduk is identical, so the number of possible moves exceeds the number of atoms in the universe. Simply feeding it a few game records will never surpass human judgment.”
Conquering Baduk would require insight beyond that of any human.
“Three years from now, Gold will challenge the world’s number-one ranked Baduk player.”
In the past, DeepMind’s AlphaGo had challenged Lee Sedol, the genius who had dominated twenty-first-century Baduk. Although another player held the official ranking at the time, Lee Sedol’s reputation made him the natural opponent. This time would be different. Yoo Jae-won wanted a flawless, overwhelming victory—one that left no room for doubt.
“This reminds me of the challenges ID Group held in the past,” Anderson remarked.
“Exactly. This time it is Gold’s challenge. The prize money will be equally substantial. It will be a best-of-five series, with ten million dollars awarded for each game. The ultimate winner of the series will receive an additional one hundred million dollars.”
“What does best-of-five mean?”
“Even if one side wins the first three games 3–0, the remaining two games will still be played to completion.”
“Ah! So if someone sweeps all five games, they would receive one hundred and fifty million dollars. What about the opponent? Do they receive nothing?”
“They will, of course, receive an appearance fee. One million dollars per game.”
“Haha! I already knew you had deep pockets, Chairman, but listening to you now, it sounds like you’re absolutely certain of victory.”
“I cannot give a definitive answer until the lid is lifted,” Yoo Jae-won replied, “but I am confident.”
He was always modest, yet when it came to IT, he was different. In the technology sector, ID Group had always been the undisputed leader, and that confidence was something no one else could replicate. While real life always contained an element of uncertainty, this time was different.
“Furthermore, the usefulness of AI Gold has already been proven across many fields,” Yoo Jae-won continued. “From Lightning Bolt’s autonomous driving, which will soon begin deliveries to reservation customers, to content filtering and security programs for internet services, to image and video analysis where Gold has established itself as the premier solution. It powers personalized services such as Next Music, and recently completed credit evaluation of mortgage-backed securities at ID TLS.”
“Hearing all that, one really gets the sense that AI technology is already deeply integrated into our lives.”
“Precisely. That is why, if Gold succeeds in conquering Baduk, it will serve as powerful evidence that artificial intelligence can be applied not only to simple tasks but also to highly specialized domains. And that will ultimately benefit the viewers watching this broadcast—and, beyond that, citizens of the world.”
“How so?”
“Because those who helped create Gold will receive dividends.”
The core of Gold’s intelligence lay in the big data generated by people worldwide. That data was personal information, and Yoo Jae-won had promised dividends in exchange for consent to use it. Ten percent of Gold’s revenue would be redistributed to users who had agreed to share their data. The promise had been kept. Several distributions had already taken place, though the amounts were still modest. Paid in N Pay points, the maximum anyone had received so far was around fifty points—roughly five thousand Korean won. This was because ID Group’s integrated email service, Email.com, already had over one billion users. The figure would have been twice as large had China opened its market fully.
Not every one of those billion-plus users received dividends. Only those who activated Gold on their Android smartphones, consented to share personal data, and signed up for N Pay were eligible. Even among those who consented, dividends were not uniform. Users could choose which types of data to provide—ranging from simple search history to the most valuable credit card and GPS records—and the more data shared, the higher the dividend.
“This distribution will be very different,” Yoo Jae-won said.
“Different how?”
“Gold’s performance last year was exceptional, so the scale of the dividend has grown considerably.”
The year 2006 had been a nightmare for most people, yet exceptions always existed. Some had profited enormously. The greatest success, however, belonged to ID Group. Gold’s revenue growth had been particularly explosive. The mortgage-backed securities credit reevaluation project at ID TLS had generated the largest single revenue stream Gold had ever produced. ID Group maintained a strict policy of paying proper fees even for intra-group transactions, so the project had been formally outsourced to ID Technology, which held all rights to Gold. Rather than a fixed project fee, they had agreed on a per-transaction commission: ten dollars for any security under ten thousand dollars, with the rate scaling upward. On average, the fee amounted to one percent of the security’s value. Since the total value of securities Gold evaluated reached four hundred billion dollars, Gold’s revenue from that project alone was four billion dollars.
Gold had not evaluated only ID TLS securities. Other investment firms, impressed by ID TLS’s rapid stabilization, had also commissioned Gold. Major financial institutions such as Bank of America and Goldman Sachs had contributed another billion dollars in revenue. Combined with the remarkable growth from internet and smartphone services—especially the powerful synergy between Gold and AdSense—and substantial, though confidential, revenue from U.S. intelligence agencies, Gold’s total revenue for 2006 exceeded ten billion dollars.
Ten percent of that— one billion dollars—would be distributed as dividends.
“Five hundred million dollars will be divided equally, while the remaining five hundred million will be allocated according to each user’s contribution. You can look forward to it.”
Roughly fifty million people met the criteria for Gold dividends. Yoo Jae-won’s simulations showed that users who had provided only minimal consent would receive around 120 N Pay points, while those who had contributed extensively could see their dividends increase by two or even three additional zeros. The difference stemmed from variations in social media and online community activity. Users who generated more data beneficial to Gold’s intelligence or who influenced new users to join received larger shares.
Even the highest payouts would not replace anyone’s income, but given the scale in 2006, another decade could change everything.
The Anderson Cooper 360 special, built around the interview with Yoo Jae-won, became a major topic of conversation.
—Chairman Yoo Jae-won declares he will conquer Baduk within three years!
—A challenge of the century with a total prize pool of one hundred and fifty million dollars!
Among all the headlines, the Baduk challenge drew far more attention than the dividends. The promise of one hundred and fifty million dollars, combined with the audacity of attempting to master a board game no conventional computer could conquer, captured the public’s imagination far more effectively than the relatively small per-person payouts.
—The Baduk world is buzzing!
—Aiming for the 2010 world number-one ranking.
—Intense rivalry among Korean, Chinese, and Japanese players!
Professionals in Korea, China, and Japan were especially thrilled. The Baduk world, which had enjoyed a brief surge of popularity in the 1990s before fading in the twenty-first century, now had both an enormous prize and a brand-new challenger to celebrate. Naturally, not a single person in the Baduk community believed Gold stood any chance of defeating a human champion.