Just turned over a new leaf and became a wise and intelligent student

Chapter 445 Generative Adversarial Networks
"No rush, Ian."

Xu Qingshan smiled and tapped the table, bringing Ian back to his senses from the neural network world he had proposed.

"I'm just talking about the most basic idea."

Xu Qingshan was very pleased with Ian's eager eyes, and he said to Ian.

"What progress have you made from Joshua? Can you manage a project independently?"

Xu Qingshan asked frankly. Ian looked at his mentor a little restrainedly. Joshua pursed his lips and pondered for a moment.

"If it's just him, then I think he still has a long way to go, but if he's learning from you, I think it might be enough."

Joshua is not the kind of mentor who likes to restrain his students.

Joshua was well aware of Ian's admiration for Xu Qingshan, otherwise he would not have brought him to China.

At the moment, Xu Qingshan seems to be very interested in his new student, so cooperating with him as a starting point might be a good start.

He was still too cautious. As for cooperating with Xu Qingshan, he actually had no other choice. At least for now, cooperating with Xu Qingshan was his best choice.

"Well, Ian, your workstation will not be here for the time being."

Xu Qingshan felt that he had a bit of a bad taste, snatching someone else's student in front of the teacher.

Just after a brief exchange with Ian, Xu Qingshan discovered that this student seemed to have unique creative thinking.

I'll check it myself. If there's no problem with his algorithm ability, this young student will be more likely to stay in China than Joshua.

A blank sheet of paper is always easier to modify than a full book.

Perhaps Joshua was a little too melancholy, and the atmosphere in the meeting room was a little low. After sitting and chatting for a while, Xu Qingshan said goodbye.

After all, he needs some time to adapt. After all, this is the first time in many years that Joshua has left Canada and come to live in this strange oriental country.

According to the previous chat, Xu Qingshan knew very well that Joshua felt like a loser who was escaping.

So Xu Qingshan simply left the Science and Technology Park with Ian, who looked confused, leaving the space to Joshua's team while he sorted out his feelings.

"Why isn't Ian with us?"

Watching Xu Qingshan taking Ian away, a student in the team asked Joshua.

"Let Ian test the waters first and see what Xu can bring us."

Joshua sighed as he looked at Xu Qingshan's leaving back with a worried look on his face.

"Oh"

The other students were not as enthusiastic about Xu Qingshan as Yue Yue was. After all, they were somewhat in different fields.

Of course, they didn't know what this farewell meant.

A year later, when they look back on this ordinary afternoon farewell, they will regret it.

If I was the one who left with Xu Qingshan at that time, instead of questioning, then would I also be the one standing on the podium with Xu Qingshan next year?
Of course, if someone asked Xu Qingshan this question later, Xu Qingshan would definitely tell him that this was not the case.

Although Xu Qingshan has some feelings and ideas about this area of ​​machine learning, he is not too involved in it.

In order for his thinking to develop, he needed someone to give him a question or an idea and let him develop it, and Ian did it.

It seems that after leaving the team and being alone with Xu Qingshan, Ian became socially anxious.

Just now he could talk so much in front of Joshua, but now he only dared to follow Xu Qingshan and didn't even dare to look left or right.

"Find a place to sit, I'll chat with you."

Xu Qingshan took Ian to his office. He planned to leave Ian to Zhang Ke to take care of him. Anyway, the equipment in the information laboratory was suitable for this type of experimental research.

"Okay."

Ian sat down somewhat stiffly, staring at the coffee table in front of him.

"Boss, did you ask me to come over?"

Zhang Ke came in from outside and knocked on the door.

Ian looked at Zhang Ke strangely. The office door was clearly not closed at all, so why did he knock? Chinese people are really strange, I don't understand.

"Yes, Brother Ke, you are not busy, right?"

Xu Qingshan said with a smile. He took out a contract he had prepared earlier, stood up and sat down at the coffee table. Zhang Ke also sat down with him.

"Fortunately, there isn't a lot that can be done recently."

Zhang Ke took over the tea tray without being told.

Everyone in Xu Qingshan's team knows that Xu Qingshan likes to drink tea, and the entire team has been nurtured into developing a tea-drinking habit. Researchers like Zhang Ke are now all experts at making tea.

It’s not that they all like to flatter, but sometimes when everyone sits down to talk about research, Xu Qingshan likes to fiddle with tea sets.

Once or twice, it can be the tea made for you by your boss.

But we can’t let the boss work hard every time we have a meeting, right?
After a few interactions, everyone has mastered the art of making tea.

"Ian, tell Zhang Ke about your ideas, and I'll help you sort them out."

Xu Qingshan flipped through the contract in his hand and motioned for Ian to talk to Zhang Ke first.

Xu Qingshan now has no doubt about Zhang Ke's loyalty to him.

And after his statement, Xu Qingshan had a better idea about the subsequent development of Qingshan Institute for Advanced Studies.

At this time, a good team leader will arrange some sweet treats for his capable generals to have a taste of.

This academic achievement on generative adversarial networks is a gift Xu Qingshan prepared for Zhang Ke.

"I roughly understand it. What I did before is not very close to this aspect, but if the boss needs it, I can learn it immediately. I feel that the overall difficulty is not that great."

Zhang Ke said sincerely.

He knew very well that he had done a good job in empirical work, but lacked in creative work. Xu Qingshan gave himself this opportunity now so that he could achieve innovative results.

There are only three people at this tea table.

If Ian's idea can be put into practice, even if Xu Qingshan gets the lion's share of the credit, the remaining two people will also benefit a lot from it.

Just like the few students who followed Xu Qingshan to complete the twin prime conjecture.

Wang Wei and Xue Xueqing haven't graduated yet, but they have already received invitations from prestigious universities around the world.

They are all here to invite them to become assistant professors for 8 years with the promise of scientific research start-up funds.

In fact, on an international scale, assistant professor positions at major prestigious universities are very popular.

To become an assistant professor, you must first have relevant academic qualifications and academic background. Applicants are usually required to have a doctoral degree from a prestigious university and have outstanding research experience and results in related fields.

Under this premise, you also need to find an institution and a research group that suits you, and prepare application materials, including resume, papers, experience letters, letters of recommendation, etc. Generally, top universities require applicants to have 3 to 5 papers published in top journals in the subject to demonstrate continuous research potential.

You can submit your application only after you are well prepared. After your application is approved, you will receive an interview invitation. You will also have to attend a trial lecture, negotiate the offer, and pass many hurdles before you have a chance to be admitted.

At top universities in the United States, a position usually attracts more than 200 applicants, who are doctoral graduates and postdoctoral researchers from top universities around the world, but only 5 to 10 people will enter the final interview.

It’s not the end here. Scientific research start-up funds are also an extremely critical competitive point.

Especially for assistant professors in science and engineering, they need to raise $50 to $100 million in laboratory construction funds on their own after they officially start their employment.

Generally, they use the various results they have produced during their doctoral studies to apply for various young scientist awards, or they use the results that have the potential to be implemented in the future to seek investment from companies and thus obtain funding.

The amount of financial funds will directly affect the school's renewal decision.

Even among newly hired assistant professors at the world's top universities, 30 to 40 percent of them often face the dilemma of insufficient research funds, thus losing their eligibility for contract renewal.

For people like Xiao Wang and Xiao Xue, this means they don’t have to worry about being unemployed for the next ten years or so.

At worst, you can work as an assistant professor at a world-renowned university for a dozen years. When you have gained enough qualifications and can no longer do the job, you can come back to China and get a stable position as a tenured associate professor.

Even Jiang Huanxi, who only has his name attached to some of his achievements, has not yet completed his undergraduate studies, but has already received invitations to pursue a doctorate from major prestigious universities.

That’s the benefit of a world-class achievement.

And now Xu Qingshan clearly wants to share this achievement equally between him and Ian.

Ian is not so bad, after all, the source of this achievement was brought about by Ian's idea.

I was completely pushed in by Xu Qingshan to share the results.

You have to know that the research field I was doing before was not at all in this area.

So Zhang Ke knew very well that he would not refuse the reward given by Xu Qingshan. He would only make himself more loyal to Xu Qingshan.

We are all adults, there are some things we don't need to talk about.

Zhang Ke actively asked Ian about various details in this regard, and also asked him which monographs or papers he should read after returning to increase his understanding in this area.

Ian was also a little nervous. Although yellow people looked young, the researcher in front of him, who was almost his uncle, was so humble and asked him all kinds of questions, which still made Ian nervous.

Fortunately, everyone studied computer science, and Zhang Ke's profound foundation and algorithmic ability were quickly praised and recognized by Ian.

Although the two were more than ten years apart in age, they got along very well.

"Very good, you have now completed the basic communication. Let me briefly talk about the overall process and ideas."

Xu Qingshan clapped his hands.

The two also looked at him.

"I named this deep learning framework Generative Adversarial Networks, or GANs for short."

"Ian has already discussed the basic principles with you. Now I will briefly talk about the training strategies and optimization methods."

As soon as Xu Qingshan opened his mouth, Ian's eyes widened, he looked at Zhang Ke, and then at Xu Qingshan.

"Amazing! Xu! You are simply the academic god in my mind!"

Perhaps because they were no longer alone together and a third person had joined them, Ian regained some of his previous social status and spoke in an exaggerated tone.

"You're not going to tell me that while we were talking just now, you were sitting here drinking this tea and you had already imagined the entire experimental process in your head?"

Even though I had heard all kinds of legendary stories about Xu Qingshan when I was in Canada, I also collected a lot of on-site videos of Xu Qingshan that were publicly released in the media.

But when Xu Qingshan's magical effect was applied to the field he was good at, Ian couldn't help but suppress his excitement and excitement.

"Maybe?"

Although Xu Qingshan has many fans, there are not many who are as fanatical and brave as Ian in expressing their love.

Xu Qingshan couldn't help but pretend a little, calmly picked up the teacup, took a sip of tea, and continued.

"GAN training is a very typical non-cooperative two-player game process. Two-player game also means normal. It should be carried out in an alternating training method. Brother Ke should have a certain understanding and mastery of game theory, right?"

"Well, I think you have learned it quite well."

Zhang Ke nodded and added.

“When we were breaking through the Riemann hypothesis, the sixth part involved the application of games and topology.”

"very good."

Xu Qingshan nodded.

"The idea is very simple. When you formulate a training strategy, you just need to pay attention to two points. The first is to update alternately and control variables. You must first fix the generator, that is, train the discriminator so that it can better distinguish between real and fake samples. Then fix the discriminator and train the generator to generate more realistic samples."

"On this basis, we design a good loss function to ensure the principle of maximizing probability."

"That is, the loss function of the generator usually maximizes the probability that the discriminator thinks the generated sample is real. The loss function of the discriminator maximizes the probability of correct classification."

Ian answered quickly.

"Bingo, set the limit."

Xu Qingshan snapped his fingers.

"This is the most basic route. The rest is the optimization method. You need to do a good job of balanced training and keep the capabilities of the generator and the discriminator balanced to avoid the failure of the generator and the discriminator due to imbalance."

"Various regularization techniques, such as label smoothing, can be used to maintain this balance."

"You can think about the rest on your own. If you are undecided, come to me. OK?"

Xu Qingshan raised his eyebrows at Ian and Zhang Ke.

"No problem, you're just about to feed our stomachs."

Zhang Ke waved his hand with a bright look on his face.

What's the difference between what Xu Qingshan did and putting an honor directly on his own head?
"I, I'm fine too!"

Ian raised his hand.

(End of this chapter)