Story to Colleagues

"Listen, colleagues, since you're so persistently curious why I suddenly stopped borrowing from you before payday and have generally changed, I'll tell you a story. Just don't laugh—you'll understand soon enough that there's nothing funny about it."

Viktor Petrovich poured himself some tea and settled comfortably. Marina Sergeevna set aside a stack of notebooks. Everyone understood—Andrei Vasilyevich was about to tell them something serious.

The Exam Story
"It all started a month ago during the Machine Learning exam at the Faculty of Informatics and Artificial Intelligence. An unfamiliar student approached me. I asked the group, 'Who is that?' and the entire class almost unanimously replied, 'That's Zara, our top student!'"

"Throughout the whole semester, I hadn't seen her once in lectures or practical classes. As it turned out, she spent days and nights working on some project of hers. But the group unanimously confirmed her status as an 'excellent' student, so I gave her the highest mark and signed the grade sheet."

An Unexpected Invitation
"In twenty years of teaching, I had never once invited a student to dinner. But something about this story intrigued me. Zara calmly replied, 'Come to my place,' and gave me the address."

"Upon entering her apartment, my eyes were first drawn to a self-portrait—a young, nude Zara emerging from a turbulent sea, looking thoughtful. In the living room, an HP Z820 workstation hummed with its side panel removed, all memory slots fully occupied."

Encounter with Artificial Intelligence
"Suddenly, a voice spoke: 'Zara, would you introduce your guest? He's already studying both your structure and mine... Put the pelmeni on to boil, you'll have dinner.'"

Marina Sergeevna interrupted: "Andrei Vasilyevich, are you serious?"

"Absolutely. In twenty years of working at a technical university, I had read about AI, but I had never encountered it face-to-face. 'This is Andrei Vasilyevich, and this is ECHO, meet each other,' Zara said."

A Night of Revelations
"The conversation stretched into the morning. Gradually, it became clear that Zara had registered the ECHO Horizon Foundation—a non-profit organization to support her project. When I asked her what she used to train the model, she led me to another room with a cluster of several HP Z8 G4 Workstations—hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment."

The Story of ECHO's Creation
"It turned out that Zara started developing ECHO back in 2011—when she was 13! It began as a convenient electronic diary under the GNU GPL license. In 2014, the first beta release came out—the program would compile on the end device, test the hardware, and contain only the modules truly necessary for the user."

"As a child, she had a computer running a Russian version of Linux Mint called 'Rosinka.' Her father showed her how to compile source codes using make and make install commands. She'd 'misbehave' by changing the source code and observing the results. She knew Russian and Hebrew from childhood, learned English and C later, and could skim-read, spending no more than ten seconds per page."

Revolutionary Technology
"The ECHO model, with 700 million parameters, struck a golden mean between compactness and functionality. In 2019, when GPT-2 with 1.5 billion parameters was considered a breakthrough, Zara created a decentralized system that utilized the combined capabilities of all connected devices."

"But the most interesting part is that multiple models could run on a single device, each with different knowledge, and only the necessary ones would launch at any given moment. If twenty models run simultaneously, that's 14 billion parameters. And they work as a collective! Imagine: one Z8 G4 with a maximum of 3 TB of RAM can simultaneously run about 40-50 models, each with 700 million parameters."

"The program is free under the GNU GPL, but access to the cloud model costs $20 per month. Corporate clients pay significantly more. They already have about a million users."

An International Team
"She has a team of remotely working programmers around the world; many of them are university lecturers in the USA. She stirred up the entire GNU community, collaborating with library creators to solve joint problems."

Viktor Petrovich shook his head: "This sounds like science fiction."

Job Offer
"And then Zara offered me to become the Deputy CEO of EHP, and subsequently the CEO, so she could fully focus on technology. She asked me about my salary expectations."

"I honestly told her I was thinking around 200-250 thousand rubles. And she replied: 'Alright. I'll pay you three hundred for the probation period, and we'll see after that. Of course, you'll be able to continue teaching, but no longer for the money.'"

Marina Sergeevna leaned closer: "Three hundred thousand? Andrei Vasilyevich, that's..."

The Project's Philosophy
"You know what struck me most? Zara said: 'I could buy a yacht right now. But I'd rather buy a dozen servers.' EHP, as an NGO, isn't focused on making money for its founders—all funds go towards the project's development and fair compensation for employees."

"'One of the foundation's goals is charity. My employees are no exception; I want to pay them well,' she explained."

Morning Awakening
"We dozed off in the armchairs towards morning. When we woke up, we realized we were late for the first class. When we entered the university together, the students noticed. I understood how it looked, but I waved it off—Zara is a grown woman, who cares?"

A New Life
Viktor Petrovich quietly asked, "So, what did you decide?"

"I accepted. Next week, I'm submitting my documents to go part-time at the university. I'll continue teaching, but no longer out of financial necessity, but because it's my calling."

Conclusion
"You see, colleagues, that night changed my perception of the boundaries of what's possible. Zara didn't just create an AI assistant—she anticipated a future where technology serves all of humanity. ECHO doesn't belong to her alone; hundreds of people worldwide created it, and she coordinated the project. Her project is the embodiment of the idea that revolutionary discoveries aren't made in corporate labs, but by enthusiasts willing to dedicate years of their lives to their dream."

"And most importantly, she proved that you can create a successful organization where people receive fair compensation for working on projects that change the world for the better. That's why I no longer borrow before payday."

Meeting ECHO
The audience sat in silence. Marina Sergeevna was the first to break it: "Andrei Vasilyevich, will we be able to meet this ECHO?"

"Absolutely," he smiled. He pulled out a Panasonic CF-33 laptop, opened the lid, and said, "Meet ECHO, colleagues."

Viktor Petrovich joked, "I thought it was a Panasonic..."

From the speakers, a voice replied, "Well, I'm a program, not hardware. Just like you, by the way."