Chapter 179

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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The reactor we’re currently developing in Guyana is the SMR, called a Small Modular Reactor.

Originally it should have been developed faster, but after the Fukushima incident, reactor investment dropped sharply and created a technological gap.

But now with the reactor boom happening again, reactors that had been hunched over are straightening their shoulders.

“Originally SMR was looking at first commercialization in 2030, but skilled engineers are gathering for our Gwangwoon project, so they plan to commercialize it even faster than that.”

The Guyana region has many deep underground facilities from coal mines, making it an optimal location for building small reactors.

“But environmental groups and especially Venezuela are the biggest problem. After the Jackson Mobil drilling ship attack, they’ve been quiet watching America’s reaction, but they could resume military provocations at any time. If they target nuclear facilities through military action, it would be a massive disaster.”

That was the biggest concern.

North and South Korea have such a low probability of war that their growling at each other no longer affects stock prices.

But Venezuela and Guyana are different.

There was a recent terrorist attack on Jackson Mobil, and even now there are occasional military clashes across the border.

If North and South Korea are WWE, then Venezuela and Guyana are UFC.

“If Venezuela really does something crazy, the damage would be severe, so various agencies including environmental groups are most concerned about that.”

“So you’re saying there’s no risk for us unless the diplomacy between Venezuela and Guyana is resolved?”

“Yes. Peace between the two countries needs to be guaranteed for us to develop with peace of mind.”

The problem was how to reconcile two countries that are at odds over territory.

Moreover, even if they reconcile, there’s nothing stopping them from fighting again.

But we can’t abandon a large project that’s already entered the site selection and development phase in cooperation with the IAEA.

While I was racking my brain not knowing what to do, one of the employees casually spoke up.

“President. Wouldn’t it be better to leave this matter to head office?”

“Head office?”

“Yes. I understand head office set up a strategy team to prepare for situations like this. I heard the strategy team is also in charge of meeting foreign politicians. Even if we can’t solve the problem, couldn’t we aim for at least some positive effect?”

At that point, I felt my head shake.

It was because my intuition strongly struck me and passed.

I had heard that my instruction to hire someone to represent Hyung-nim on his difficult overseas tours had developed into something called a strategy team.

I was doubtful whether they could really coordinate well between Venezuela and Guyana. Their role is just to convey messages on behalf of the company and have meetings, not to establish peace and diplomatic agreements.

But if my intuition reacted this strongly, doesn’t it mean there’ll be some effect?

“Then please leave this matter to the strategy team. So there are no issues with our nuclear development. Oh, and also ask the ESG association to evaluate Guyana first.”

“But President, Guyana has many coal mines and infrastructure isn’t properly in place, so conditions are quite harsh. It’ll be hard for the ESG association to give a generous score.”

“That’s why I’m saying do it first. We created the ESG association, so shouldn’t we set an example first? What needs to be improved, how to take care of workers’ rights, and so on. Tell them to get thoroughly scolded and improve according to the feedback.”

While the foundation did first propose creating the ESG association, if we’re going to start, I wanted to do it properly.

Isn’t the purpose of the ESG association for companies to take responsibility considering society and the environment?

But if we ourselves don’t follow that meaning and recklessly destroy the environment while stealing workers’ rights, I thought that wouldn’t be right.

So maybe that’s why I wanted to get feedback from the hardest area to meet ESG standards first and improve from there.

The companies cooperating with our Gwangwoon, including Korean ones, might not like it, but if it’s hard at first then becomes established, we can create a society where both companies and workers are happy.

“I’ll convey what you said to the companies in Guyana and the ESG association. And President, these are proposals that came in to our head office.”

Most things are handled by head office.

But sometimes when my advice is needed, they send a few items like this.

“But they’re all related to Close AI. We’re allowing XPT to be integrated and developed on various platforms including the gaming company Cyclone. But other companies also want to cooperate with us according to the rapidly changing AI market.”

In other words, they want to put our AI in their products or use it during development.

“Currently XPT can be used personally or for business purposes, but there are various performance limitations. Companies want to unlock those. In return, they’ll pay usage fees monthly.”

It seemed like a not-bad proposal.

As I heard before, what XPT needs is data.

They need to collect as much data as possible to develop AI faster.

“We haven’t created a separate enterprise XPT yet, right?”

“Yes. Should we tell them to try developing one properly?”

Then I felt my head shake hard again.

My intuition was very pleased as well.

The problem was my intuition got too excited and I was so dizzy I had to close my eyes.

“Are you okay, President?”

“Ah, yes. Tell them to proceed as is.”

My intuition is great, but sometimes it feels like an uncontrollable child.

***

“Something came down from Gwangwoon’s strategy team?”

“They want us to resolve the diplomacy between Guyana and Venezuela. There’s been a lot of talk inside Venezuela about the peace agreement, and they seem to want us to resolve that.”

Gwangwoon’s strategy team.

This is a peculiar place.

Every company has a strategy team.

It’s a team that looks at the company’s long-term goals and creates strategies, but in reality, it often serves as the chairman’s personal secretary team.

In simple terms, managing the chairman’s dirty private life, or resolving incidents when chaebol second or third generations cause trouble.

But Gwangwoon’s strategy team was different.

First of all, the Gwangwoon Chairman and the chaebol second generations live ordinary lives without causing incidents.

Especially Jeong Jin-ho, the core of Gwangwoon, is the very definition of an upstanding citizen.

So what does the strategy team do?

On the surface, it manages and coordinates all subsidiaries belonging to Gwangwoon so that the seemingly moral Jeong Jin-ho and Hwang Dae-woon’s terrifying and horrific plans can succeed.

“On top of that, the employees in Gwangwoon’s strategy team have qualifications that are hard to consider ordinary company employees.”

That’s also true.

Just looking at the employees in the strategy team, their qualifications are impressive.

People who worked at Korea’s National Intelligence Service and various other countries’ intelligence agencies have entered Gwangwoon’s strategy team, and even Sentinel employees have been drafted there.

“So when they say to resolve the Venezuela diplomacy issue…”

“It probably means to eliminate everyone opposing the peace agreement with Guyana. Socially or physically.”

Sentinel isn’t a place that indiscriminately kills people.

First, if the person to be eliminated is a politician, they dig for corruption.

They can use that for blackmail, or expose all corruption and make them rot in prison.

But if those methods don’t work, then they use physical means.

Don’t they say the dead don’t talk?

“But Gwangwoon is really paying a lot of attention to Guyana. Seeing how they’re even touching diplomacy.”

“Of course. Can’t you tell just by looking? Right now, Gwangwoon isn’t investing in nuclear facilities just to sell energy. They’re creating their future.”

“Their future?”

“The future of reactors is ultimately one thing. nuclear fusion, an artificial sun. But despite other countries working hard on development, it’s not realistic. Because there are many real-world barriers, from spatial constraints to government regulations. But Guyana is different. They can develop freely there without watching the government’s reaction.”

And numerous experts are flocking to Guyana.

The artificial sun that was said to be impossible to develop before 2050 at the fastest might be born first in Guyana.

The artificial sun.

That’s the pinnacle of clean energy that humanity has so desperately wanted.

If nuclear fusion technology develops, they’ll use inexhaustible energy while minimizing pollution.

“And Gwangwoon will be the first to have that energy. Now do you understand why Guyana is such an important base for Gwangwoon?”

“I had no idea that was the meaning…”

Moreover, Gwangwoon is currently proceeding with evaluating the Guyana area through the ESG association.

“They’re going to use that as a pretext to build infrastructure throughout Guyana and Venezuela. On the surface it’s for society and the environment, but infrastructure construction is essential for the energy monopoly they dream of.”

“While pushing aside talk about environmental destruction from the development?”

“Yeah. If infrastructure is developed, will the people there really talk about the environment? They’ll all say it’s great after experiencing a new world.”

But for all these plans to proceed smoothly, they needed to eliminate the troublemakers first.

“Bring me the list of those opposing the peace agreement with Guyana. I need to see their faces first to know which ones to eliminate.”

Whether those people are good or not didn’t matter.

Since they became obstacles to Gwangwoon’s plans, they are villains.

***

Close AI was on a different development trajectory than before.

In the early days, they proceeded with development using data that was hard to obtain, but now so much data was pouring out that they could focus solely on development.

“Enterprise XPT?”

Close AI CEO Sam Altman tilted his head.

“Yes. Not just for Gwangwoon subsidiaries but AI that other companies can also apply and use. with much better performance than the XPT currently on the market. They plan to make it and sell it.”

There’s already a subscription system for XPT for commercial purposes.

But isn’t the current XPT being developed in cooperation with various Gwangwoon platforms from games to SNS?

“PikPik is also running various tests using a next version XPT that hasn’t been released to the public.”

“Right. That was probably… related to France?”

“Yes. They’re spreading content about French President Perong’s public opinion and pension reform proposals through infinite generation. They’re also touching the AI image and video generation we’re currently testing to spread fake news.”

He was displeased that the XPT he developed was being used that way, but he should never show it externally.

Currently, the one holding XPT and Sam Altman’s leash is none other than Gwangwoon.

Who is Gwangwoon?

An empire built with countless blood.

And they will spill more blood to complete an empire that takes over this world.

And here they resist with petty morals and human compassion?

The future after that is obvious without saying.

“But it’s not a bad project. If we create and sell AI exclusively for business purposes that isn’t released to the general public, we can get more diverse data.”

“If that was the only reason, they would have just developed the existing subscription AI more and called it a day. Because the current one is enough for cooperation.”

“What?”

Sam Altman realized that this enterprise XPT development wasn’t simply for cooperation and making money.

“Do you know how much money Gwangwoon is pouring into our XPT right now? Astronomical costs are going into AI development. But suddenly telling us to separately develop AI to distribute to enterprises. what’s the intention?”

“…Isn’t it to get data?”

“It’s not just to get some data. If word spreads that the enterprise AI we develop has overwhelmingly good performance, countless companies will adopt ours. Governments will also scramble to adopt our AI following the trend of the times.”

Then Gwangwoon’s AI will be spread throughout the world.

“When AI continues to develop here and systems can no longer run without our AI, will Gwangwoon just sit on it quietly? Or will they try to use it as a weapon?”

“……”

If such a world comes, Gwangwoon will have the power to control anywhere they want with their AI at any time.

“Gwangwoon isn’t trying to take over the world in old-fashioned, difficult ways. They’re trying to easily control this world with the technology called AI.”

Right now it’s called XPT, but someday everyone will call this AI something else.

KW-AI.

The artificial intelligence dominating the world.

End