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| GANSAI Industries | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type | Partially-Closed Corporation | |
| Traded As | GNSI | |
| Industries | Artificial Intelligence Robotics Mining Research and Development | |
| Founded | 2051 (Defense Agency) 2056 (Corporation) | |
| Founder(s) | Shinzo Gansai | |
| HQ Location | Kita Ward, Osaka, Japan (Japanese Branch)
Incheon, Korea (Korean Branch) Boston, Massachusetts, United States (American Branch) Shanghai, China (Chinese Branch) | |
| Key People | Ayura Kawabata (CEO) Yeom Soomin (President) | |
| Net Worth (₵) | ₵53.1 trillion | |
| Revenue (₵) | ₵43.5 trillion | |
| Equity (%) | 76% | |
Products and Services
Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
On top of traditional, contemporary robotics of the time, GANSAI prides itself on making robots that are nigh-indistinguishable from people called "humanlikes", with advanced artificial intelligence capable of exhibiting wide ranges of emotions as well as having vivid and unique personalities. These humanlikes, as well as their normal robotics can be applied to any fields that a normal person can, as well as ones too dangerous for humans such as low-budget belt-mining.
Prosthetics
GANSAI additionally manufactures high-end prosthetics, brought about by their experience with robotics as well as investment in companies offering medical-services, that link with the human brain using Man-Machine Interface (MMI), technology, allowing for unparalleled dexterity, sense of touch, and even programmable pain levels.
History
Early Days (2056-2060)
Initially founded as a defense agency in 2051, and run by the Japanese government out of Osaka for the purposes of coordinating research into the military applications of artificial intelligence and robotics, GANSAI would gain increasing amounts of autonomy as was being incrementally opened up to private investment until becoming a legitimate corporation independent of the Japanese Government in 2056. This lead to South Korea and the United States seeing the opportunity of a potential think-tank that could help accelerate the practical application of artificial intelligence in public and private use, forming partnerships between their own national institutions and colleges such as KAIST in South Korea as well as Boston Dynamics and MIT in the United States, with GANSAI.
This initial web of connections between the United States, South Korea, and Japan, helped propel GANSAI to a global market and get into various research and development contracts with the ever-growing power that was the United Nations, and by proxy the SDC and PKC. Their early days as a rapidly growing corporation can be summarized as being avant-garde and risky in business direction, awarding them with a multitude of achievements such as the first "Stage II General Artificial Intelligence", the subsequent "Post-Stage II Artificial Intelligence", and other breakthroughs that pertain to humanoid robotics.
"Adam" and the Foundations of Humanlike Robotics (2060-2061)
While involved in traditional branches of robotics, GANSAI was actively pioneering a field that they had started since their independence as a corporation dubbed "Humanlike Robotics", with hypothetical AI and thinking machines that were to be created with the express purpose of passing off as humans rather than hyper-intelligent machines, who were meant to have humanlike behaviors, similar learning patterns, and provide a more "normal" work-environment between humans and robots. Reasoning behind this was that it was believed by GANSAI to be more efficient, as well as add a "sentimental" value to their robotics, as well as the personal beliefs of the researchers in the creation of "new life". This idea of "humanlike" development would occasionally come under public criticism of whether they were human or not,
By 2060, the first humanlike prototype would be produced and publicly revealed a year later in 2061, by the name of "Adam". The creation of Adam is considered the starting point from when the "Humanlike Robotics" field fully came into existence, with other robotics companies usually devoting a sub-department or full department of their organization to "humanlikes" in an attempt to get their hand in the market. As for Adam, the humanlike machine intelligence passed the Turing Test, as well as GANSAI-curated tests, with flying colors, having an increased rate of learning compared to humans while having a unique personality after his initial year of development, and became the standard for future GANSAI humanlikes as well as humanlike robotics from other companies. Naturally though, developing machines similar to humans did give GANSAI an opening corner of the market into prosthetics, further exemplified by their behavior towards smaller companies in the following years.
Corporate Intrigue and GANSAI Proprietary Rights (2061-2072)
In light of their recent breakthrough, GANSAI as a company began to change internally, the first signs of change being the abrupt stoppage of public buying and selling of GANSAI stock in 2062 and subsequent change of status into a "partially-closed" corporation and partial reopening of public stock-trading in 2063. These changes meant that public individuals were "capped" on how much stock of GANSAI they could buy and how much of the stock proportionally could be held by members of the public. This essentially cemented major stockholders within GANSAI into static positions within the private organization itself, which lead to the reorganization of the Board of Directors into the "GANSAI Directorate", which seated the private stockholders of the company as well as powerful or important people within GANSAI, acting as an executive board that made company-wide decisions that elected a President of the company while answering to the Chief Executive Officer of GANSAI.
On top of the sudden reorganization of the company, some prominent individuals in the company had been fired or laid off, with one director outright disappearing. The latter of these employee-reorganizations alarmed the Sol Policing Agency, who opened up a general investigation into GANSAI only to find nothing incriminating. However, the SPA maintained a close watch on the growing corporation, which as of late had become a conglomerate as while GANSAI itself still remained focused on "Artificial Intelligence and Robotics", it began to buy up controlling stakes in other, smaller companies in various markets ranging from security services, medical services, mining, and so on. With these controlling stakes in these smaller companies, GANSAI would provide services within their corners of these markets using their AI and Robotics as the medium to provide these services(IE, AI and Robots providing security, medical services, educational tutoring, etc.).
Naturally, being the pioneer of a new field, GANSAI sought to capture and maintain that same market, feverish in their protection of their trade secrets to the point of "leasing" humanlikes rather than "selling" them to maintain warranties that would give them exclusive rights to repair and maintain their own machinery as opposed to their corporate competitors. Though they didn't fully push this "leasing" on its own, otherwise people would've just picked another product, GANSAI instead making arrangements with global organizations to have GANSAI-Certified technicians within operation areas of their humanlikes while making mainly the "machine intelligence" portions of their humanlikes the area in which only GANSAI could operate.
Involvement in Korean Reunification and Growing GANSAI Influence (2072-2091)
By the time political unification of the Korean peninsula was achieved, GANSAI was one of the first to line up and invest in the previously closed-off northern portion of the peninsula. The corporation was incredibly proactive in their approach to Korea given their nearly two decades of history with the South Korean government which had turned into just the "Korean government", using these connections to push its money into helping modernize Northern Korea and further ingratiating itself with the Korean government. This initial investment into South Korea helped consolidate their control within robotics markets of East Asia even after Korean reintegration ended, other companies either not having the deeply ingrained connections that GANSAI had, the volume of production that GANSAI had, the marketing, or all three, leading to GANSAI quietly buying up large shares of many East Asian corporations, effectively becoming the Conglomerate that represented East Asia in regards to technology, outside of Kusanagi of which GANSAI had a healthy cooperation-competition with given the vast differences between their two markets.
International Court of Justice V. GANSAI Industries (2091-2095)
Even with growing paranoia and a mentality that was reminiscent of a corporate dragon guarding its cash-cow of trade secrets, GANSAI had a whistleblower in 2091 that spouted out a long tirade of seemingly unbelievable claims with little evidence ranging from "Corporate Death-Squads" that kept people permanently silent, "human wetware computers", as well as aggressive and illegal corporate practices on top of strong-arming smaller corporations out of business or selling stock to them through coercion and threats. The Sol Policing Agency and International Court of Justice had been waiting for a reason to finally deal with the conglomerate that they viewed as having gone "monolithic" with what followed after being warrants and court-dates being issued against the GANSAI Directorate rather than the Conglomerate itself, who hired the best lawyers they could buy from the United States, Japan, Korea, and China in preparation of the leak. It turns out that GANSAI found out about the whistleblower shortly before they came forward and testified to the United Nations while not having enough time to hypothetically intervene, which gave them time to prepare for the subsequent court case that would be leveraged against them.
This preparation led to four years of grueling court cases that constantly shifted from whether or not GANSAI had some hand in illegal experimentation or business practices, to the jurisdiction, reasoning, and legality behind the warrants, as well as the credibility of the whistleblower. GANSAI appeared to be transparent while not wanting to totally bow to the whims of the court, GANSAI lawyers using the company's years of aggressive marketing as a foundation for a corporation that had done nothing but provide a desired product to the market and worked towards the betterment of humanity, though in reality they were filibustering the court-case for as long as they could until the ICOJ had nothing to work with, expecting the case to last decades at most, even as they provided robotics for the SDC in light of the Martian Revolution.
What the GANSAI Legal team didn't expect, was the Bombing of Olympia, which politically killed any altruistic image of the United Nations, even if it was an accident, something that GANSAI Legal exploited for their ongoing court-case. Under the table, GANSAI would negotiate a greater volume of robotics and machinery to the SDC and PKC to not only supplement losses during the Martian Revolution, but also those that would've been soldiers being discharged or leaving the two militaries due to outcry and protest with the Bombing of Olympia. A few months after these secret-negotiations, the ICOJ and the SPA were forced to dismiss the case and were unable to prosecute GANSAI on the same charges later on in the future due to double-jeopardy. As for the whistleblower, they ended up disappearing from a witness protection registry within SPA a few months later, never to be seen again.
GANSAI in the Present(2095-)
As of the modern day, GANSAI is a large contributor to the Sol Defense Corps, the Peacekeeper Corps, as well as various national and private entities globally and on private installations outside of Earth. It seems they've "settled" into a position of comfort, more or less just functioning like a typical megacorporation, though their chequered past leaves questions for the average person. Were they really guilty of what they were accused of in full, or was it an exaggeration? What happened behind closed corporate doors in the 2060s, what happens behind those same doors in the present?