[Administrative privileges detected. User determined as the complete owner of this technology.]
Now this was new to Ludo. It seemed that whoever created this had different privileges for different clients.
As someone who bought complete ownership rights of the entire Virtual AI Assistant technology itself, Ludo seemed to possess more control over its abilities. Which made sense, since he could access its source code at any time.
Though even just the glance he'd taken over the millions of lines had stumped him, as seasoned programmer, so he doubted he'd be making any changes any time soon.
[As the new owner, you get to choose a new name for me. Please enter your new name.]
This came as a nice surprise to Ludo, the AI was even asking him to give it a name! If he didn't know any better, he'd suspect it might start considering itself his child at some point…
But this was also something he wanted to consider carefully. As something that was supposed to be his flagship product, he needed to choose an eye catching name that would hopefully one day become a household name.
'What should I call it?'
Ludo's fingers rubbed against his keyboard as he frowned in contemplation.
He was more of an analytical mind than a creative one. He always sucked at choosing names in video games or when opening an account online.
'Ohh… yes this could be good.!'
His eyes flashed as his fingers typed away. Four simple letters were pressed on his keyboard, and the name appeared on the screen.
[Blue]
Even though it was simple, Ludo liked it a lot. It was short, which made calling its name feel much more natural, but it was unique enough to remember easily.
Not to mention, it matched well with the brand he had chosen for his company, Bluestar Technology!
'Maybe I am a creative mind after all…' A smug look appeared on his face.
The screen of his laptop flashed, and a dialog box appeared underneath.
[Are you sure you want to choose the name 'Blue'?]
It was just a confirmation step, in the case he changed his mind or something.
But for some reason Ludo felt he was being mocked for his choice of name…
'You can't even think for yourself, who said you could mock me!'
Almost out of spite, he chose yes once again.
[Blue is now at your service.]
As its original purpose was to be a virtual assistant of sorts, albeit a much more powerful one that those that were commercially available on Earth, it seemed like it wanted to engage in conversation.
But Ludo wasn't interested in that use, right now he just wanted to know if it could do the one thing he had even bought it for.
First, he gave it internet access, though he set it to read only access, since he didn't want it to go around uploading sensitive data.
Then he gave it one basic command.
"Compile a list of the current most powerful, commercially available AI chatbots, assistants, and machine learning models and using yourself as a reference scale, and tell me in years how far behind in development they are."
This request was simple, as while he estimated that it was probably half a century ahead, that was just his prediction. He felt that if anyone should know best, it would be the AI itself.
[As you have requested. There are currently three AI machine learning models at the 'forefront' of development, namely 'ChatCGT', 'GoPilot', 'Moogel Virgo' which are estimated to catch up to Blue's development in an estimated 43 years, 6 months on the current projected path. While the other machine learning models are expected to catch up in 50+ years.]
Barely even a second passed before he had all the information before him. Of course, this was limited by his server hardware. If he housed Blue in something like a supercomputer, he had no doubt that it could have done the same thing in a measure of milliseconds.
'Wow, okay. Seems I underestimated Earth's capabilities a little. But even then, those are only the top three at the forefront, I was right when it comes to the other ones.'
Still, even if he was off by nearly 7 years, Blue was ahead by over four decades, and that was taking into account an increased development of hardware alongside it as well.
After all, the development of AI was limited by the hardware they had access to. If they had access to something like a fully fledged quantum computer — not an experimental one — then they could probably catch up in an order of months.
Now came the big question though. The one that Ludo had been building up to all this time.
"Are you able to create a copy of yourself with a level of development 5 years ahead of everything else?" Ludo asked, feeling quite nervous.
He chose a level of development 5 years ahead because he felt like that was the sweet spot between being far enough ahead of the competition to be realistic, but not so far to bring suspicion down on how he'd created it.
He didn't plan on selling Blue's altered version itself anyway. His plan was to split it up into different functionalities, like having a 'Blue Translation Assistant', 'Blue Chatbot', etc.
That felt like a more realistic option for him, as competing directly with the biggest competitors like ChatCGT didn't make sense. They had billion dollar corporations behind them using extremely powerful supercomputers to train them over years of development.
He had no such thing, and was a freshly created company too, so he had to make it look like he'd just made some innovations ahead of the curve.
[At my current operational capacity, I can create at a copy 7 years ahead at best.]
An ear to ear smile bloomed across Ludo's face upon reading Blue's answer. As it turned out, it was capable of more than just 5 years, but he didn't want to push his luck.
"Good. I'll just stick to the 5 though."
His plans were finally set in motion.