“You know,” Mr. Sanchez said, putting down his glass, “No matter how long I have known, I am always amazed at how much processing power this facility has.”

Anthony swallowed what he was drinking and put down his glass, “Why is that?” he showed he was engaged.

“Almost everything is done in house, even the wine we’re drinking is grown and fermented down here. There are two factories that just make CPUs, and many more that make other computer parts.” Mr. Sanchez drank a little more, “And all of that is put into huge server farms, which then in turn are used for heat.”

“Woah.” Anthony said. “So how much processing power is there?”

“It’s near impossible to measure,” Mr. Sanchez explained, “But it is more than anyone can imagine or use. It is estimated to be around 2.4 petahertz of processing power, as if that is a good measurement, and around 110 exaflops of raw graphics power - most used for AI.”

Anthony was amazed, even though he couldn’t really quantify the numbers, he did some quick math, and at 12 gigaherz per CPU core (an actually accurate convenient estimate) there were around 20 million active CPU cores, which he understood as a “fuck ton” even though, again, he could not quantify it. “What AI stuff do you do?”

“A ton of stuff. A bunch of theoretical stuff, like researching AI methods; deepfakes and deepfake detection; deep text understanding; computer defense; a whole bunch of data processing; basically everything that you can think of.” Mr. Sanchez took another drink, “It’s a whole new world - where everything is internet connected, and likewise everything is vulnerable to anyone around the world.” Mr. Sanchez took another drink, Anthony could tell that he was going to keep talking.

“During this whole hour long conversation we’ve had,” Mr. Sanchez continued as Anthony expected, “I have been trying to decide if I should nominate you for the board, for the CTO.” Mr. Sanchez said. “And I have decided that I want to. With my endorsement I think that the majority of the board will vote for you. The vote is in July so you can finish out High School at least. Obviously I won’t do it unless you want me to.”

“Do you really think they’ll be fine with someone as young as me?” Anthony asked.

“Age doesn’t really matter - what you bring to the table does - and you would bring a lot.” Mr. Sanchez led his explanation into another argument: “You were the one that suggested the idea of the implants, and practically made them. You’ve helped almost double your family’s stock analysis accuracy. Your experience as part of one of the families, and one who has worked closely with The Insurance Company as well gives you the best thing possible to bring to the table: experience no one else has.”

Anthony already understood what would be required along with the job, and what compensation he would get.

“Sure.” Anthony said.