Chapter 21: The Conference
NexGen’s annual AI conference drew two thousand attendees and the kind of media attention that made Jihoon simultaneously excited and nauseous.
Dojun gave the keynote. He talked about responsible AI—not the corporate buzzword version, but the real thing. The version that meant saying no to profitable applications because the risks were too high. The version that meant publishing safety research that competitors could use. The version that made shareholders uncomfortable and engineers proud.
“We build the future,” Dojun told the audience. “Not the future we can build—the future we should build. Those are different things, and the gap between them is where catastrophe lives.”
The speech was well-received. Tech journalists called it “visionary.” Industry analysts called it “idealistic.” One anonymous competitor called it “naive.”
After the conference, a young researcher approached Dojun with the nervous energy of someone about to say something they’d rehearsed a hundred times.
“Mr. Park, I’m Dr. Kwon Seokhun. I’m working on adaptive reasoning architectures at KAIST. I’ve read all your papers on AI safety, and I think your approach is exactly right. But I also think the safety tools we have now aren’t enough for what’s coming.”
Dojun studied the young man. Wire-framed glasses, intense focus, the kind of brain that ran at a frequency most people couldn’t hear.
“What’s coming?” Dojun asked, testing him.
“Recursive self-improvement. It’s not here yet, but the theoretical foundations are being laid in half a dozen labs worldwide. When someone builds it—and they will—we need alignment tools ready.”
Dojun felt the familiar chill. Not because Kwon was wrong—because he was exactly right. And because standing in front of him was a brilliant, idealistic researcher who didn’t know that the thing he was warning about had already destroyed the world once.
“I’d like to continue this conversation,” Dojun said. “Are you free for lunch?”
“I’m free for the rest of my life if it means working on this problem.”
Dojun smiled. “Let’s start with lunch.”