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"Here's how I'm thinking about it." Hargrove spoke slowly.
"Argus's comprehension ability in the natural language field is just too strong. Once an ability this powerful gets put toward AI translation, the results will absolutely be better than every AI translator on the market right now."
Ryan agreed with his thinking too. With a bit more strengthening of Argus's current language comprehension, along with the addition of training in other languages, it could very quickly surpass every translation software on the market.
Every last one.
And what's more...
Ryan flipped through the databases in the system, examining the key modules for real-time speech interpretation within them.
Those modules couldn't be copied out wholesale, but the lines of thinking on them could point the current research center in a direction.
At this thought, Ryan said at once, "We need to get this product into testing as soon as possible. I'll come down to the site to guide you all through it, so make your preparations."
Hearing this left Hargrove a little dazed. Ryan was actually coming over?
Had his department become The Mech Expert's own flesh and blood now?
The Mech Expert's own flesh and blood. That particular phrase came from Mason's lament over the loss of his department's standing.
Back when the prosthetics research center was the only one, theirs had been Ryan's flesh and blood beyond any doubt, able to enjoy the privilege of Ryan personally coming down to oversee and guide them at the site.
But after two more research centers had been added, the throne of the favored child had clearly departed from them.
No matter how you looked at it, the brain-machine and artificial intelligence research centers were far grander and far more important than they were.
Ryan didn't know what was running through Hargrove's head, and only said, "Right. According to the company's recent strategic needs, your department has to produce a new product as quickly as possible."
And it had to be one that could make money.
Ryan quietly appended that line in his heart.
The next day, Ryan set off for the Prism research center.
Inside this tower now existed three research departments, prosthetics, brain-machine, and AI, each with its own floors.
One was the company's sole cash cow at present, and two were technological high grounds that had to be seized for the future.
Artificial intelligence especially. Its development in recent years had grown faster and faster, and without anyone quite noticing, it had already come to influence people's work and lives on many levels.
And what he was doing now was making that influence more concrete still.
Walking into the AI research center, the first thing to meet his eyes was row upon row of spacious workstations.
The programmers seated at them were hammering away hard at their computers.
"You're The Mech Expert!"
A rare sight of a girl programmer spotted him right away, and everyone's gaze swung around, the rolling swells of keyboard noise in the office falling still along with it.
Ryan nodded to her. "Where's your boss right now?"
"He's in a meeting in the conference room. Let me take you over."
Under everyone's watching eyes, Ryan followed the girl to the door of the conference room.
She knocked. "Mr. Hargrove, The Mech Expert is here."
At once, Hargrove came and opened the conference room door, surprise all over his face.
"Uh... Chief Designer, why are you here so early?"
"The earlier I come, the earlier we solve the problem."
"What issue are you all discussing in the meeting right now?"
Ryan glanced at the people seated in the conference room. Every one of them carried the unmistakable air of a programmer or an engineer.
"We're discussing several of the main difficulties in AI translation," Hargrove answered, ushering Ryan into the conference room as he spoke.
Ryan took a look at the conference room's projection screen. Only three titles were listed on it:
Translation Selection.
Translation Reordering.
Data Scarcity.
His mind turned a bit, and he recalled that these were the main difficulties AI translation currently faced.
"Chief Designer, why don't you say a few words to open the meeting first?" Hargrove understood the ways of the workplace intimately. When it came to something like a meeting, how could you not invite the leader up to say a few words first?
He wasn't only a technical expert, he was a shrewd operator too. Otherwise, how could he have made such a big name for himself in the industry?
Of course, the premise for all of this was that the leader in question had genuine substance, rather than being a straw bag.
Ryan obviously couldn't be a straw bag. The Argus Algorithm they were researching had been written by Ryan himself. If a man like that was a straw bag, then what did that make everyone else?
A steamed pork bun?
Ryan had no intention of declining either. He even said to Hargrove, "Let me be the one to run this meeting instead."
Hargrove's face instantly went blank with confusion.
Boss, all you needed to do was go up and give a leader's little speech.
Was Ryan too young to understand these workplace conventions? Had his flattery landed on the horse's hind leg?
"I'll take this chance to explain some of the key points to all of you clearly while I'm at it. That way there's no need to go over it a second time," Ryan explained a little.
Fine. With it already put that way, Hargrove naturally wasn't going to refuse again.
He also wanted to see just how deep Ryan's understanding of AI translation went.
At this point, Ryan walked to the front and began explaining the three difficulties.
Not one person below dared to take it lightly. They all listened attentively.
Some among them were veteran employees with prior research experience in AI translation, and some had never touched the field before, transferred in recently to lend support. Without exception, every one of them was listening intently now.
The Argus Algorithm had all been invented by Ryan. He needed no other halo. On the strength of that single achievement alone, his words were enough to command everyone's serious attention.
"The first difficulty of AI translation, the problem of translation selection." Ryan spoke before the projector.
"Across the various languages, the phenomenon of a single word having multiple meanings is extremely common. Take the English word 'book,' for instance. Everyone seated here should know it can be either a thing you read or the act of reserving something, so I needn't list them all out."
The crowd chuckled. As top-tier programmers, they naturally wouldn't fail to know an English point this basic.
Ryan went on. "But in AI translation, take a word like 'run' on its own, and there are a great many possible translations, to operate, to flee, to campaign, a flow of liquid, and so forth. Before the accompanying context is known, with only the single word 'run' to go on, the AI has no way to translate it accurately into another language."
"This is the difficulty of translation selection."
Everyone present nodded in agreement. This explanation was indeed correct, and their attitude toward the lecture grew more serious still.
Ryan continued. "The second difficulty is the problem of translation reordering."
"In every language, when people speak, the order in which the various words are expressed is different."
"Take a sentence like 'I read a book on Sunday.' Translate it into another language and then translate it straight back word for word, and it might come out as 'I on Sunday a book read.'"
"That's because in some languages the time adverbial is habitually placed at the end, while in others, like German or Japanese, this situation shifts and changes in different ways again."
"And as sentences grow more and more complex, the combined ordering among the various sentence components, subject, predicate, and object, grows more and more complex too."
"This is also one of the reasons you can find so many sentences and articles online that turn into absurd comedy material after being run through translation a few dozen or a few hundred times." Ryan tossed in a little joke as he reached the end.
The people present all laughed. Some of those who didn't understand AI translation had only now grasped the reasoning behind it.
"As for the third problem, data scarcity."
Ryan's expression was very relaxed. "This one, for us, might just be the easiest of them all to solve..."
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