Chapter 216: Technology with Substance
December 3, 2017.
A video appeared on Kang Tae-joon’s feed.
[KTalk Feed] - @Kang Tae-joon | 120,098,655 followers
We are still ‘driving’
But soon, you will experience ‘traveling’
A car that thinks like a human
EV-Nova, Coming Soon
Attached video file 1
Attached file 1 (Luna)
Upon clicking, the video began to play.
[Video Sequence]
SCENE 1: Rush hour in a bustling city
Narrow alleys, complex intersections, sidewalks cluttered with bicycles and scooters.
Raindrops fall, and a taxi screeches to a halt, blaring its horn.
Amidst this chaos, a vehicle with a man inside, the EV-Nova, moves quietly.
Something unseen judges, reacts, and stops.
Like a ‘thinking car.’
SCENE 2: An elderly hand, a child’s eyes
An elderly person attempting to cross the street suddenly stumbles.
A child dashes into the road without warning.
The driver does not touch the wheel.
Yet, the EV-Nova smoothly halts and emits a warning sound.
An invisible care envelops the road.
SCENE 3: Switching to an internal perspective
The camera shifts inside the vehicle.
The driver sits in the driver’s seat, eyes closed.
A heart rate monitor activates, analyzing stress, and the interior lighting softly adjusts.
Soft music plays on the radio, and the AI speaks.
“You’ve worked hard today. I’ll take you to your destination comfortably.”
SCENE 4: Nighttime driving
A quiet city night.
The EV-Nova ascends a rainy hill.
From a distance, a child’s doll rolls into view, and the vehicle decelerates.
Without a single miscalculation.
SCENE 5: Message
White letters appear on a black background.
“This is not autonomous driving.”
“This is technology that understands humans.”
“EV-Nova judges like a human.”
Within 12 hours of being posted, the video garnered 19 million views,
and the EV-Nova began to be perceived not as vaporware but as technology with a philosophy.
└Wow, is something like that actually possible?
└It’s not possible yet, but isn’t Dojin going to develop autonomous driving technology?
└lolololol Tesla, Google Waymo, GMO Crozo, etc. have been developing autonomous driving for much longer. Looking at what they’re doing, it’s quite something.
└Dojun is not ‘rule-based’ but uses a cloud-based feedback learning structure, right?
└Cloud-based feedback learning structure? What’s that?
└It means the AI learns in real-time. The second attached file on the feed explains it in detail.
└So, the car studies on its own and gets smarter?
└More accurately, it seems like it’s not the car getting smarter but the AI called ‘Luna’ that gets smarter.
└If this is really implemented, it would be amazing.
└It’s mentioned in the materials too. Until now, OS has only been installed on electronic devices like computers and smartphones, but in the future, it will also come into the real world.
└I saw that too. They call it physical AI. Unlike the software we’ve had until now, it’s an AI that directly moves, operates, and works in the real world.
└EV-Nova is just the beginning, and the fields where it can be applied are numerous: robots, drones, unmanned ships, surgical robots, autonomous heavy equipment, autonomous delivery, cooking robots, and so on.
└Whoa, if that really happens, what will become of Dojin Frontier’s corporate value?
└lolololol I told you before, whether Dojin Frontier’s PER is 50 or 500 doesn’t matter. Growth stocks, no matter the current price, you must buy and accumulate whenever you have money.
└With just this one video, what the existing autonomous driving companies are doing feels trivial. Is it just me?
└The video was genuinely shocking.
The next morning.
The American tech magazine TechHeadline published this article:
[The future of autonomous driving is not about letting go of the wheel, but about entrusting your heart. And the first to point in that direction was ‘Dojin Frontier.’]
Tesla Headquarters, Fremont, California
Private Lounge.
Elon Musk was shaking his whiskey while gazing at the production line outside the window.
“Dojin Frontier has released an interesting film, I hear?”
Elon Musk belittled the autonomous driving video released by Dojin by calling it a film.
However, John Lee, the chief engineer of Tesla’s autonomous driving team standing beside him, had a slightly different reaction as he held up a tablet.
“This seems a bit different.”
John Lee showed the video directly to Elon.
On the tablet screen, the ‘EV-Nova’ ad video posted on Kang Tae-joon’s KTalk feed was playing.
Elon began to watch the tablet casually with one hand.
But as the video neared its end, his fingertips trembled slightly.
“……Well made. The visuals are decent too.”
He tilted his head, recalling the ‘heart rate analysis’ and the ‘AI’s comforting words’ from the video.
“Just emotional manipulation, it seems. Can this really be persuasive?”
“In my view, it does seem a bit unrealistic. But on the other hand, it doesn’t seem entirely bad either.”
“Not bad?”
Elon raised his head to look at John Lee.
“The rule-based approach we use in autonomous driving has clear limitations, doesn’t it?”
Elon nodded involuntarily.
Rule-based.
In autonomous driving, anticipating every situation and inputting responses one by one would inevitably have limits, no matter how much data there was.
John Lee cautiously continued.
“But in the video, Dojin talks about cloud-based feedback learning. If that’s actually implemented……”
His voice trailed off.
“The vehicle learns continuously while driving, the learned data is modeled again in the cloud, and the results are redistributed to the vehicle.”
Elon spoke in a low voice.
“……Theoretically, that would be real ‘autonomous driving.’”
It was persuasive, which was why the video posted by Dojin became a topic of discussion.
Elon Musk let out a dry laugh while looking out the window.
“But the problem is that implementing it isn’t as easy as it sounds. Data transmission speed, stability, communication infrastructure, computational resources…… everything needs to work perfectly. If it were that simple, autonomous driving would have been commercialized long ago.”
“……Even if we can’t create it, it seems like Dojin’s vision has been properly implanted in people’s minds with this video.”
Kang Tae-joon himself was someone who always stirred up controversy, and the video was more than enough to grab attention.
“Definitely, that Kang Tae-joon guy is strategic.”
For now, it might be mere bravado.
But when bravado gains belief, belief attracts investment, and investment brings the market, it becomes real.
Elon placed the tablet on the table with a thud.
“First, find out in detail what this ‘Luna’ mentioned in the attached materials does.”
…
…
At the same time.
Google Waymo Headquarters, Mountain View.
A conference room with a transparent glass wall overlooking a massive test bed.
CEO Michael Saunders and Waymo’s chief engineer, Ruby Chen, were reviewing Dojin’s EV-Nova video.
As the video ended, a brief silence fell.
“This kind of direction…… quite clever.”
Ruby Chen quietly spoke up.
“It didn’t showcase technological advancement, but it touched ‘people’s hearts.’”
The message that the car ‘understands’ humans.
To Michael, it was quite shocking.
“They’re taking a position completely opposite to ours.”
“We’ve been emphasizing ‘accuracy,’ ‘sensor recognition rate,’ ‘dataset size,’ and so on. But Dojin…… seems to be showing a car that ‘cares like a human.’”
“Still, if you dissect it piece by piece, there are many flaws.”
Ruby Chen nodded in agreement.
“For that scenario to actually work, it would need to handle millions of variables, and cloud learning at the current level is more like an idealistic fantasy.”
“Yet, it somehow feels like we’ve lost.”
Michael scrolled through the feed comments on the screen with his hand.
└A car that judges like a human, seriously gives me chills.
└I’ve been driving for 10 years. It seems like it would drive better than me.
└EV-Nova itself is great. If it becomes autonomous, no matter the price, I’ll definitely buy it.
“What we need right now isn’t technical explanation or persuasion, but a ‘story that makes people want to believe.’”
Ruby Chen pondered for a moment before speaking.
“We do have a similar UX scenario. However, until now, it’s been overshadowed by the evaluation that it’s too ‘unrealistic.’”
“Now is the time to bring it out.”
Michael said firmly.
“Dojin gave people ‘hope.’ We’ve only been ‘explaining.’”
He slowly stood up and looked at the global autonomous driving market growth graph on the conference room wall.
“The tower of technology we’ve built over five years won’t be shaken by a single video, but a major competitor has clearly emerged.”
“As you said, it’s time for us to show something too.”
Even if the technology Dojin presented isn’t immediately commercialized, the ‘direction of their vision’ they unveiled began to stimulate the entire market.
Later, Tesla, Google Waymo, GMO Crozo, and others competitively released ‘UX-centered vision videos’ emphasizing emotion over technology and philosophy over specs.
The war of autonomous driving technology shifted from a battle of technological prowess to a ‘war of storytelling.’
But they overlooked something.
The video released by Dojin wasn’t just a ‘technological vision.’
It was a ‘philosophy built upon tangible technology’—the already under-development Black Robin chipset, Luna, and the cloud feedback learning structure.