"Focus on the ambiguous phrasing here. You have to cross-reference the context with the speaker's tone to make a call. Also, tell Professor Calloway and his crew to step on it. We can't move into the next phase of testing until they finish their batch."
Nick issued the instructions to Zack and the other techs while picking at a lukewarm lunch.
The "Professor Calloway and his crew" he mentioned was the Language and Literature Analysis Team—a group of linguists and experts they'd brought on specifically to bridge the gap between code and culture. The team was massive, nearly a hundred strong, consisting of professors and grad students specialized in English literature and sociolinguistics.
It was a loose organization. Everyone was a temporary hire; they had their day jobs at universities or research institutes, and this was just a side hustle. Nick wanted a permanent team, but the company couldn't afford to keep that much specialized brainpower on the payroll yet. Plus, poaching tenured professors from top-tier schools wasn't exactly easy.
So, they used this freelance model to handle the heavy lifting of vocabulary annotation and dialect comprehension. Simply put, they were teaching the AI how to actually talk. The Assistant had to do more than just recognize words; it had to understand intent.
Standard English was easy, but slang, regional idioms, and "internet speak" were a nightmare for a program. The team's job was to annotate thousands of these terms, providing accurate interpretations so the AI could process them as usable data.
The software didn't have an independent consciousness. Any perceived "intelligence" or "personality" it displayed was carefully crafted and hard-coded by the humans behind the curtain. The workload was staggering. They had to account for every regional accent from Boston to New Orleans, which exponentially increased the complexity. For now, they were strictly sticking to English—dialects and foreign languages would have to wait until there was a real market demand.
Nick couldn't have attracted this much academic talent with just a paycheck. These were high-brow intellectuals with plenty of pride; money didn't move the needle for them. Instead, he'd used the allure of "Artificial Intelligence" to pique their vanity.
To the public, AI was a playground for engineers, but Nick pitched it as the ultimate linguistic challenge. Giving a machine the ability to interact like a human appealed to their sense of legacy. They weren't just working for a startup; they were defining the future of communication.
The team didn't work at the headquarters. Instead, they rented a space near the local university where the professors could drop in during their off-hours. If the funding held out, Nick planned to make the team permanent and eventually recruit dedicated students to build his own linguistic department.
"Also, the Cloud Computing Center should have the results ready by this afternoon. Make sure someone is—" Nick was cut off by a familiar voice.
"I swear, you guys are living the dream while I'm out there in the trenches dying."
Nick turned to see Tyler trudging toward them, looking noticeably haggard.
"Hey, look who's back," Nick said with a grin. "You eaten yet?"
Tyler pulled a chair over and slumped into it. "I haven't even had a sip of water since I walked in this morning. Do you think I've had time for a burger?"
"Ouch. Rough day," Nick said. He waved over a tech who was finishing his own meal. "Hey, grab two lunch boxes for the CEO—and make sure they're hot."
"Sure boss!"
The tech nodded and hurried out. Nick pushed a bottle of water toward Tyler.
"The sharks still circling?"
Tyler took a long swig of water and sighed. "When you're sitting on a pile of gold like this, do you really think they're going to walk away? It's not just the local VCs anymore; the big-name overseas funds are sending people now. Every tech giant you can name has a representative in town. That four-star hotel north of the office park? It's basically a convention for suit-and-tie sharks right now."
"That crazy, huh?" Zack said, pausing mid-bite. The other techs nearby looked stunned.
"Crazier than you think," Tyler said. "Yesterday, a C-suite exec from a major tech firm showed up without an appointment, demanding to see Nick. I had to personally show him the door. Now, even the other startups in the zone are trying to get in on it.
They're hanging out in the hotel lobby, trying to pitch their own services to the people who are here for us. The city's management committee is also pressuring me to close a deal—they think a big partnership will put this district on the map. But, like you said, I'm keeping everyone at arm's length until the tech is ready."
Nick nodded, lit a cigarette, and took a deep drag. "We can give the VCs a hard 'no.' Our current revenue covers R&D and operations. More cash right now is just a leash we don't need. Once you take the money, you lose the freedom to pivot.
As for the tech companies, keep the lines open. We don't have to sign anything, just see what they're bringing to the table. If it gets to be too much, hand it off to Giovani. That's what we pay him for."
Tyler cracked a small smile. "Actually, I kind of like it. There's something satisfying about seeing these billion-dollar brands I used to look up to suddenly acting all polite and trying to suck up to us."
"Spoken like a true masochist," Nick joked.
Tyler started devouring the food the tech brought back. After a few frantic bites, he slowed down and looked at Nick. "Oh, almost forgot. Last night, the cops caught three guys loitering near the back fence. Preliminary check says they were definitely targeting us. The precinct called this morning to tell us to beef up our security."
"Wait, what?"