CHAPTER 229: HEAD HUNTING (1)

Jack woke to find Madison riding him languidly, her grapefruit-sized breasts swaying as her hips moved up and down.

He slid into her mind as he reached up and grasped her nipples and began playing with them.

Because he was in her mind, he could tell that she liked firm pressure that bordered on, but never crossed into, painful.

As he played with her tits, finding what she liked, she moaned and her hip motions became more urgent.

When they finished, he headed to the training room, and Madison went to her office.

After training for a few hours, Jack cleaned up, then went to meet with Phineas.

On the other side of the secure doors from his private space, he had established a similar space for Phineas, and future associates.

There was a common room, set up like a cross between a living room and a hotel lobby, a training room, a hallway for private rooms, and a hallway for offices.

Jack found Phineas in his office, studying something on his linked laptop.

As soon as Jack walked in, Phineas looked up and said, "Jack! Good to see you. Thanks again for letting me be here during your second days. It’s amazing how much work you can get done when you have no distractions and no internet."

Madison had worked out a way to provide somewhat laggy internet access to them using a set of linked devices, but he chose not to provide that service to Phineas just yet.

"Glad you like it. Have you tried the training room yet?"

"No. Not yet." Phineas paused briefly, then said, "So are you just stopping by to visit, or did you have something you wanted to discuss?"

"I wanted to get a quick status update on our acquisition plan, then pick your brains about something."

"Alright, sure. I’ve entered into preliminary talks with Lars Jensen about a merger. Lars seemed open to the idea, but he also brought his granddaughter to the meeting, and she seemed more skeptical."

"Do you think she’ll become a problem?"

"I’m not sure at this point. We have another meeting scheduled in a few days. I’ll let you know after that if I think she’ll be a problem. My gut is telling me she is mostly worried about her grandfather’s legacy. It doesn’t help that I’m having to be cagey about my investor."

"Alright. Be sure to let me know the moment you think things might fall apart."

"Will do. Now, what was this thing you wanted to pick my brains about?"

"We have AI models that are not merely competitive with but superior to what is currently available, and we want to start an AI company. None of us have the expertise to run such a company, so I was thinking I might need to find a CEO to help."

Looking surprised, Phineas asked, "Just how much better are your AI models? Do you want to take a small bite out of the market, or do you want to crush the competition?"

"We have models that are just as good as the best proprietary models and models that are 50 percent better than the best proprietary models. We want to release the just-as-good models as open-source and offer the better models as part of a service so we can crush the competition."

"I see. How do you plan to provide the paid service?"

"Initially, we’ll make use of Yocotoly and BallSoft clouds, but we want to build our own data centers in the next year or two. We have an ultra-dense server architecture that allows us to host an entire data center worth of compute power in a single medium-sized room."

"Are you expecting the profits from your paid service to pay for the data centers? A single data center worth of GPUs would cost billions of credits. I can’t see any way you could have accumulated that much profit in a single year."

"We’ll need to buy or build the data center buildings, but the servers will be essentially free."

Phineas whistled in appreciation. "The other big players are spending billions of credits per month to acquire more GPUs so they can keep up with each other. Leaping ahead of them basically overnight will make some serious waves."

"Yes. As much as I’d prefer to avoid making waves so soon, I’d rather steal a march on the other AI companies before one of them solves the AGI problem. If we crush them in the next year, they won’t have the revenue to continue iterating on better AI models."

"Are you worried about a skynet situation?"

"Yes. That, and I’m concerned that the AI companies are pursuing profit with no regard for the impact they are having on society as a whole. If I can crush them, then I can try to guide AI development towards a role of human assistance, instead of human replacement."

"I’m not sure that will be possible. Most companies will choose a cheap AI over a costly human."

"You’re probably right, but if we can tilt the scale towards AI models that can assist, but not replace humans, then we can slow down that process at least a little. Then maybe I can introduce alternative income opportunities for the people that eventually get displaced by AI."

"Well, I applaud your vision. As for someone to head your AI company, I know of a few people with the kind of experience you need who I think will share your vision."

After getting the names and details of the people Phineas recommended, he headed back to his own office.

Since he was going to be interviewing people anyway, he decided to also talk to Lars Jensen and his granddaughter.

When he arrived at his office, he added a hallway, then a large room. Inside the room, he created a tiny tropical island surrounded by water with a gazebo in the center.

He’d thought about creating a conference room but decided that a tropical island in the middle of a large room would better set the tone. He wanted his interviewees to immediately understand that they were in a unique situation.