Chapter 211: Laboratory Seven (9)

“That’s a scary name,” Yoo Song-Mi said.

“It is actually terrifying. It’s a rare genetic disorder that’s usually found in babies between the ages of three and twelve months, but it can also occur in adults.”

Young-Joon began explaining to Yoo Song-Mi, but paused.

“Do they die if they get it?”

“Ultimately, yes.”

“It is really scary.”

“It’s a disorder that’s caused by a mutation in the mitochondria. It usually starts with an inability to feed or hold their neck up, then they develop problems like vomiting, epilepsy, seizures, loss of muscle strength, and then an increase in lactic acid in the cerebrospinal fluid. Then, their vision will deteriorate, their eye muscles will be paralyzed, and they will ultimately die from respiratory distress or loss of heart function.”

“...”

Yoo Song-Mi gulped.

“Anyways, let’s talk later since I’m busy,” Young-Joon said. “Thank you for bringing me the report.”

* * *

The development of the artificial intelligence quickly progressed under Kim Young-Hoon’s leadership. The software developers from SG Electronics were definitely talented.

Tanya Manker applied GRO’s machine learning algorithms to ecosystems and helped the artificial intelligence program learn the population of organisms, food chain pyramids, and terrain structures.

But before they could enter the big data of thirty thousand species that Young-Joon provided, they had to first train it to understand ecosystems.

“For example, in order to train a machine to distinguish between cats and dogs, you have to show it tens of thousands of pictures of cats and dogs,” said Tanya Manker. “Before entering the data of thirty thousand species, we have to show the program data about other organisms and examples of what happens when something happens in that data.”

Doctor Legion was responsible for that practice data.

“Australia has the highest rate of extinction in the world, with fifty-four species of animals and twenty-eight native mammals going extinct in the last two hundred years,” said Doctor Legion. “For this reason, ecology has long been an important branch of study in Australia, and I have a data set on ecosystem disturbance because I’ve studied it for a long time. It’s nothing compared to the thirty thousand species in Guangdong that Doctor Ryu brought, but the AI will be able to learn from it.”

When Europeans landed in Australia in the eighteenth century, they brought with them livestock like cats, rabbits, red foxes, deer, buffalo, goats, and ostriches, as well as animals like donkeys and camels. These data were the best to learn about environmental changes caused by the competition between native and invasive species.

“I will leave the entirety of the coding to SG Electronics,” Kim Young-Hoon said.

The project’s progress was extremely successful, thanks to the combination of the climate-based AI algorithm and program, a data set of various organisms, and the best software developers in the world. The project progressed quickly as the task delegation of Kim Young-Hoon, who understood the various elements of this project, was exquisite.

* * *

About a month later, a prototype of ABAI (A-GenBio Artificial Intelligence), A-GenBio’s ecological environmental prediction program, was ready.

Young-Joon left Laboratory Seven and traveled to the headquarters to see their progress.

“Director Min Byung-Jin will explain it to you,” Kim Young-Hoon said.

“The AI was developed based on the data set provided by Doctor Legion and the algorithm developed by Ms. Tanya Manker,” said Min Byung-Jin.

“In the context of native and invasive species competing, we introduced a species called the Cane Toad, which was originally intended to control beetles that eat sugarcane, but it failed,” Doctor Legion said. “It was because the Australian sugarcane is tall, and the beetles cling to the top; the Cane Toad can’t jump that high. Ultimately, it resulted in no positive impact on sugarcane cultivation but the elimination of other predators because of the toad’s venom. The number of animals like quolls and goanna, which are native to Australia, plummeted.

“Let’s test whether the AI can predict this event.”

Min Byung-Jin activated the program. The program’s name popped up, along with the AB7 logo, which stood for A-GenBio Laboratory Seven.

[ABAI]

It was short for “A-GenBio Artificial Intelligence.

Min Byung-Jin clicked on the sugarcane field in North Queensland, Australia. He selected the Cane Toad from the learned species data and adjusted the number to three hundred.

[Release]

He sped up the time after pressing the button.

About a month later in the AI, the number of quolls and goanna that lived in the area gradually decreased. After a while, the toads began to move westward at a rate of forty kilometers per year.

“It’s because of the weather,” Tanya Manker said. “This program mimics the GRO’s climate prediction system. The area that is a bit west of where they were released is warmer and more humid, which is a more favorable environment for the toads to live in.”

“And the migration speed was calculated based on the radius of the toad’s activity,” Park Hyun, a developer of SG Electronics, interjected.

“Let’s accelerate to 2009, the last time Doctor Legion checked the toad population,” Min Byung-Jin said as he pressed the button to accelerate the time.

Now, the habitat had expanded two thousand kilometers from the released area. The population had grown to more than ten thousand organisms.

“That’s similar to the last time I checked the data,” Doctor Legion said.

“Good,” Young-Joon said. “It can’t digest the data of thirty thousand species yet, right?”

“Yes, but it’s developed enough now that we can slowly start to input that data, one by one,” said Tanya Manker.

“Thank you.”

* * *

Kim Young-Hoon came after Young-Joon, who left the room after the meeting.

“Mr. Ryu.”

“Yes?”

“As long as our program is based on Tanya Manker’s GRO algorithm, we will continue to pay a certain amount of royalties to GRO,” Kim Young-Hoon said.

“Yes, I am aware of that. I’m sure that was the best solution that both legal teams came up with.”

“If you’re going to use that program at Lab Seven in the future to deal with various environmental issues, why don’t you just absorb GRO?”

“Absorb?”

“You can make it an affiliate of A-GenBio.”

“But I don’t think Ms. Manker would do that. First of all, GRO is in the U.S., while Lab Seven is in Korea.”

“So, what if we tie it to the cancer lab in the United States?”

“The cancer lab?”

“We could exchange some equity with the A-GenBio Cancer Laboratory.”

“...”

Young-Joon thought for a moment.

Kim Young-Hoon advised once more.

“If we improve the environment, we’re going to be fighting a lot of carcinogens. I think there’s a lot of synergy between A-GenBio Cancer Laboratory and GRO.”

“That’s a good idea, since we’ll have to keep using that program anyways. Can you talk to Ms. Manker about it?”

“Alright. Thank you.”

As Kim Young-Hoon started to walk away, Young-Joon grabbed him again.

“By the way, Director Kim, were you always this passionate about work? I’ve hardly ever seen you active at A-Gen except when you’re helping me,” Young-Joon asked with a smile.

“I’ve been thinking about retiring because I’m getting older now, but I suddenly felt energized when I was given the opportunity to lead a big project like this,” Kim Young-Hoon replied, chuckling.

* * *

Another month had passed. It was now April, and mosquitoes were starting to appear in warmer areas like Guangdong.

“It is a little early.”

Yang Gunyu, the governor of Guangdong, pondered after receiving a report that mosquitoes were starting to appear. It had already been two months since Young-Joon’s warning.

“Ah, it’ll be fine.”

Young-Joon may be the world’s best biologist, but unless he was God, he couldn’t know everything. The wastewater treatment facilities at the paraxylene plant were perfect, and there wouldn’t be any problems.

But with a strange feeling of nervousness and anxiety, Yang Gunyu went online to A-GenBio’s website.

[A-GenBio, the world’s leading biopharmaceutical company, opening up the future.]

Then, something suddenly popped up.

[ABAI Trial Launching by A-GenBio CEO Ryu Young-Joon_Live Streaming. View Now]

Yang Gunyu’s eyes narrowed. He pressed the video but turned off his computer when the screen opened to YouTube. It was because YouTube was blocked in China, and he couldn’t watch it. Instead, he accessed the same web address on his cell phone, which had an IP bypass program installed. The link led to an official YouTube channel set up by A-GenBio, and Young-Joon was doing a live stream.

* * *

“A-GenBio presents ABAI, an artificial intelligence program that predicts ecosystems, created in collaboration with SG Electronics and GRO, a climate change prediction program,” Young-Joon said.

He was running a supercomputer at A-GenBio’s headquarters. There was a crowd of scientists and developers watching the program in action.

“This program is based on GRO’s artificial intelligence program that predicted the red mold epidemic in the United States. The GRO, which was able to analyze factors such as weather, temperature, humidity, and wind, can now analyze ecological systems as well.”

Young-Joon used ABAI to call up Guangdong’s data.

“This program contains the ecological information of around thirty thousand species in Guangdong, China. We will use this program to predict the ecosystem of the Pearl River Basin, the river that flows through southern China, including Guangdong.”

—He’s doing something weird again.

—YouTube all of a sudden?

—It’s Red Mold Season Two, bastards.

—I don’t know about the ecosystem of the Pearl River Basin, but A-GenBio will become an invasive species on YouTube, like the largemouth bass.

Young-Joon presented the map of Guangdong as he read the real-time comments. Then, he clicked on a tributary of the Pearl River Basin.

“Now, I will release ten thousand mud carp into the river.”

Young-Joon then entered the number of mud carp into the river. Then, as he accelerated the time, the carp began to disappear.

“The reason why the mud carp are decreasing is because they have a strong competitor in this river: tilapia, a freshwater fish from North Africa. They were introduced to China for consumption because of its fast growth rate and disease resistance,” Young-Joon said. “However, over twenty years, this fish has driven China’s native fish, the mud carp, to near extinction. So let’s remove tilapia from the region.”

Young-Joon removed the tilapia and then reintroduced the mud carp. This time, the number of carp remained stable instead of decreasing.

“This is a real phenomenon found in some cities in the upper reaches of the Pearl River Basin that are trying to remove tilapia. In those regions, the mud carp numbers have recovered to some extent,” Young-Joon said. “This program developed by A-GenBio is an artificial intelligence that has been trained on a huge database of climate and species, and it can track the consequences of ecosystem changes with a fairly high degree of accuracy.”

Young-Joon moved back to the computer.

“Now, I’ll show you what happens when we run a paraxylene plant, which has been in the news recently.”