NOVEL NEXT Chapter 193: More Progress
It was fourth Friday and Jack was checking in with the crew in Madison's office to see if there was any more progress.
When he entered, he found all three of them wearing VR headsets with their heads pointed at something over the center of their triangular desk.
"What 'cha looking at?" he asked.
Without taking off her VR headset, Rina grabbed another headset off the desk, then walked over and handed it to him.
"Here, put these on," she said.
After he took the headset from her, she gave him a quick hug, then returned he her chair.
When he donned the VR headset, instead of the nature scene he'd seen last time, he found the headset was in augmented reality mode and there was something hovering over the desk.
"Um, what am I looking at?" he asked.
"It's a nano-battery cell," said Rina.
"Okay. Why are we looking at a nano-battery cell?"
"My transistor design search program was producing some weird results, and while debugging it, I noticed that it kept drifting towards weird designs that sort of looked like they might work better as a battery."
She huffed.
"So I figured. Fine, if you want to find battery designs, I'll let you search for battery designs. Then, I forked the program and altered the evaluation criteria in the copy to search for battery designs. And just this morning it found this beauty."
Nearly everything used lithium batteries these days, and there were growing political tensions over access to lithium. He wondered if this new design would solve that problem.
"If is good? Does it use lithium?"
"Good? Yes, it's amazing. In simulations, it shows 5000 watt-hours per kilogram! That's twenty times the energy density of typical lithium-ion batteries! And best of all, it uses aluminum and other common minerals."
"Twenty times? Damn! That means a typical cell phone could go for two weeks to a month without a charge. Can we make it without Genesis Heart?"
"No," she said, sounding disappointed. "Not yet." Then in a more upbeat tone, "But I think I could design a machine that can."
"What about safety?" he asked.
"It will be safer than lithium batteries. You'd still be able to catch one on fire if you did it on purpose, but I think it will be almost immune to explosions or accidental fires."
He hadn't planned to get into the battery market, but this was just too good to pass up.
"You can continue to pursue this as a side project if you want. But I want to get the new VR headsets on the market first."
"Okay, sure," said Rina.
"What about the transistor search? Any luck? Did you fix the bug?"
"I did, and yes. Once I figured out the problem, it started churning out new designs. So many, in fact, that I had to tighten the evaluation criteria. I've found a number of interesting designs, including some that are sub-nanometer."
"Anything we can use immediately?"
"No. Nearly everything I've found will require new manufacturing techniques."
"What about photonics? Even if it can only be made using Genesis Heart."
"I've found a few photonic transistor designs, but I think we can do better."
"Great work so far. It's amazing how much progress you've made in less than a week."
If he counted second days, it was more like a month, but even then, their progress was amazing.
Rina smiled. He could tell she appreciated his compliment.
"What about you, Nora?" he asked.
"I'm making progress. I decided to focus on core assemble techniques Like bow to build-up mettles layer by layer, or how to build crystals using nanotech. Then we can work on putting the techniques together later."
"So, you're trying to build up the non-equivalent of hand tools, like drill, saw, and welder?"
"That's right. then once I have a bunch of individual nano-tech tools, I can start putting them together into more complex nanotech machines."
"What about ways to make the nano-machines?"
"That's part of the tools search that I'm doing. I've already figured out how to make a toy nano-machines, but there's still a long way to go before we have anything truly useful."
"By 'toy' do you mean, it's technically a nano-machine, but doesn't do anything useful?"
"Yes. It just oscillates between two shapes but doesn't do anything else."
"Still, it's impressive how much progress you've made so soon."
"I wouldn't be anywhere near were we are without Genesis Heart."
He turned to Madison. "What about you, any progress?"
"Maybe? I think I found an A.I. architecture that performs just as well as the largest existing models but at a fourth the size. But the problem is, I don't understand how it works!"
"Does it perform better than the largest models when it's the same size?"
"Yes? But not by much."
"Well, that's still progress. Maybe once you figure out how it works, it will provide clues towards achieving AGI."
"Maybe." She paused, then said, "Um, so, there's this company that tried solving AGI with a different approach and they amassed a huge database of general human knowledge. With Rina's help I obtained a copy of their database, and I've been using it to train an A.I. model."
"Okay, any results?"
"Sort of. I'm not using it to train an A.I. model as a candidate for AGI. I'm using it to train an A.I. model that can be used to filter out garbage from the training data that is scraped from the internet. I'm hoping with cleaner data, I'll get a more useful A.I. models."
"Makes sense. Anything else?"
"Yes, I'm hitting the limits of what a single Cerebras can do, and the existing interconnect technology is a serious bottle neck to working with larger models. Is it okay if Rina helps working some interconnect technology so we can stack a bunch of Cerebras wafers together and make a mega server?"
"Sure, if you think it will help, go for it."
"Great."
She hopped up and gave him a hug before returning to her chair.
All three girls were back to focusing on their screens. They had made so much progress in such a short time, and while he was proud of what they were accomplishing, he was feeling more and more like he was just a manager.
He still enjoyed working in his lab and studying genetic engineering, but it irked him, just a little, that he wasn't contributing anything tangible towards his own goals, not counting the lottery money.
Sure, none of it would be possible without Genesis Heart, but it wasn't him doing the magical things; it was the artifact. He wanted to feel like he was contributing directly.
He turned and headed towards his lab. He had recently discovered that there was a researcher who had made a minimum viable cell. One with only a few hundred genes. And he was using it to learn more about the fundamentals of genetics.
While the girls were focused on technologies, he was going to stay focused on genetics. A few billion years of evolution had led to the amazing genetic machine known as humanity, and he wanted to learn all the secrets genetics held.