Top academic

Chapter 224 The Great Era

For Sundar Pichai, this was obviously hard news for him to accept.

He is not a scientist and does not need to care about how theoretical progress will change mathematics and physics.

But he is a capitalist, or an agent of a capitalist. What he needs to care about is who holds the more advanced theories and whether they can bring profits to capital.

Even if there is no immediate profit, at least there will be no loss to the capital he controls.

But unfortunately, now he may have to face the worst case scenario. If this news spreads, losses are almost inevitable.

He now faces a decision: whether to abandon or temporarily seal the research of the Google Quantum AI team.

Giving up would mean that billions of dollars of investment would be wasted, but this is not the worst thing.

This has been planned for more than ten years.

Their scientists realized what the era of quantum computing represented when quantum mechanics began to develop and gave rise to the branch of quantum computing.

It even leads to the concept of quantum supremacy.

Of course, another way is to introduce new theories and develop new technologies, but this involves the construction of the entire commercial ecosystem.

Including the corresponding software development, application scenario exploration and partner selection. Theoretical innovation may not have an immediate impact on the market, but theories that have been proven feasible in practice can do so.

So it didn't take long for Sundar Pichai's brain to come to the most favorable conclusion.

“Can new theories help us regain our leading position in technology? Or can our existing accumulation be used to benefit from new theories?”

Thomas Kurian immediately replied: "This requires Professor Martinis to make a judgment, but as I said just now, he did not attend the public report meeting. Perhaps we have to wait until he contacts those who attended the exchange meeting before we can draw a conclusion.

Of course, even if it is as we hope, even if our early accumulation, I mean both hardware and software, can really perfectly match the new theory, we may not be able to get it.

I have heard an important news. This report conference was urgently stopped by the organizer after Qiao Yu announced two new Mersenne prime numbers. "

Thomas Kurian didn't make his words clear, but he believed Sundar Pichai understood what he wanted to say.

They are all smart people, and at their level they will put themselves in other people's shoes when it comes to important issues.

After thinking for a moment, Sundar Pichai asked, "Do you think it's possible for us to hire Qiao Yu as chief scientist or technical strategy advisor?

He doesn't have to come to the headquarters full-time, he can be part-time. He just needs to accept some commissions and provide feasibility suggestions for some projects in Google Labs."

For all CEOs of high-tech companies, they probably understand best the saying that talent is the primary productive force.

Especially those technical talents who are truly qualified to lead.

In fact, Google also has many Chinese scientists, especially in the fields of computer vision, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and deep learning.

It’s like someone joked before that the competition in artificial intelligence technology in the world is a game between Chinese scientists and Chinese-American scientists.

As for the technologies of other countries, they can be ignored.

Especially Europe, which once gave birth to the Renaissance, has fallen far behind in the new technological revolution and productivity competition, and its situation is so bad that it is hard to look at.

Especially in the past decade or so, China and America have been competing against each other at all levels.

But while the two great powers of the East and the West can still live their lives as usual, old Europe is going from bad to worse.

Whether it is industry or technology, development has begun to lag behind significantly.

Even if some emerging technology companies occasionally develop, if you look at the shareholders behind them, you will find that they have nothing to do with Europe, or even be directly acquired by American companies.

For example, DeepMind and Nuanc Communications, which are emerging in the field of artificial intelligence, as well as the earlier ARM and Imagination Technologies.

Especially Imagination Technologies, which was one of the world's leading chip design companies at the time and was also Apple's exclusive GPU supplier.

The American private equity fund that acquired the company is even said to have a background in China Asset Management.

This world is often so magical.

The eldest and the second oldest in the village were having a quarrel, and everyone else probably wanted to watch the fun. Who would have thought that their family would fall into decline just by watching...

This is probably the current dilemma of Europe. Although it can still rely on its old capital in the academic field, in terms of the latest technology, old Europe is no longer qualified to eat at the table...

So in a sense, Sundar Pichai's idea is very appropriate. Given Google's size, inviting Qiao Yu to serve as a part-time technology development strategy consultant is not condescending.

If the two sides can cooperate, at least they can beat the world in the field of quantum computing.

Moreover, as a 17-year-old Fields Medal winner, there seems to be no bottleneck in the progress of academic research...

If this idea can be realized, perhaps Google will be able to redefine the boundaries of technology in the near future.

For Thomas Kurian, a senior vice president in charge of technology, Sundar Pichai's words undoubtedly touched his heart.

If they could really recruit talents like Qiao Yu, it would undoubtedly be the most cost-effective thing for executives like them.

After all, the spread of such epoch-making theories and technologies will inevitably affect the stock prices of technology companies.

Especially for Google.

You should know that quantum supremacy was first hyped up by companies like Google, IBM, and Microsoft. Although this is indeed the case.

After all, Shor's method has already established that it is possible to factorize large integers in polynomial time since its proposal.

Modern encryption systems, whether RSA, ECC, or DH, all rely on large integer factorization or discrete logarithm problems.

The reason why quantum supremacy cannot be used directly to threaten others now is simply because there is no hardware that can efficiently run Shor's algorithm.

This is also the reason why everyone is investing heavily in the research of quantum computers.

No matter who designs a quantum computer that can run Shor's algorithm efficiently for a long time first, they can at least collect protection fees for decades.

Even encryption technology in the post-quantum era requires their help, right?
Who could have imagined that it would be possible to simulate quantum computing using electronic computers so soon?
If there is no countermeasure, once the news gets out, even if there is not enough evidence to prove that Qiao Yu's theory will directly challenge modern encryption systems, it will affect Google's stock price.

And if this is really proven in the future, Google's stock price may plummet.

As we all know, the basic salary and year-end bonus of Google executives only account for a small part of their compensation. The bulk of the compensation is stock incentives.

Especially restricted stock awards. Most of these stocks have an unlocking period. They cannot be cashed out before they expire. If Google's stock price falls too much in the future, the executives will suffer the most.

So Thomas Kurian said without hesitation: "I think we can give it a try. However, we don't have a direct channel to contact Qiao Yu for the time being. If we just send an email, we are not sure if he will receive it. After all, there will definitely be resistance from other aspects."

At this point, Thomas changed the subject and asked, "Of course, we can think of ways to deal with all of these. But if we can pass on the message, how do we discuss compensation and incentives?"

"Let Qiao Yu name the price, but first make it clear that the bulk of a consultant's salary will definitely come from equity incentives. As long as he accepts this, I can talk to the board of directors."

Sundar Pichai said without hesitation.

I have to say this is the most appropriate approach, directly linking consultants’ compensation to restricted stock.

There's nothing we can do about it, mathematicians are just too smart.

Sundar Pichai was also afraid that Qiao Yu would ask for a huge salary but not do the work, and he would not be able to explain to the board of directors.

Especially since Qiao Yu's identity was very special. Even if he did something like this, as long as he stayed in China, Google would be unable to do anything to him.

But it’s different when it comes to stocks. Not only can everyone prosper together, but it also allows everyone to prosper together.

After all, Google is a US-listed company, and there are many restrictions on transactions, and the entire process can be supervised.

Even if Qiao Yuzhen took the stocks and didn't work, he couldn't easily cash them out. At least there was a check and balance.

"I see. Professor Martinis has many acquaintances who went to China to attend this public lecture. Maybe someone can bring a message.

By the way, there is news that Qiao Yu’s mother owns a company that provides computing services, which was just registered this year.”

"Let's leave it at that for now. We'll talk about it when we get some news. By the way, have Professor Martinis give me a report tomorrow."

“Yes, Mr. Pichai.”

Sundar Pichai quickly hung up the phone with Thomas Kurian, not because he was in a hurry, but because another call came in.

There's no way, today is destined to be a sleepless night.

……

In fact, it wasn't just Sundar Pichai who had a bad night's sleep today.

Many big names in the technology industry are receiving calls one after another. In addition to the technology circle, the same is true in the financial circle.

What many people don’t know is that many of the latest technologies often have direct applications in the financial circle.

For example, financial big models.

The stock market, the credit market, the subprime mortgage market... God knows how much financial data with extremely low signal-to-noise ratio has been accumulated.

More than ten years ago, various mathematical and statistical methods were directly applied to various financial mathematical models, especially quantitative trading.

This is no longer the 1990s, when financial duels could be carried out by a few excellent traders manually trading behind closed doors. Large companies rely on sophisticated mathematical models and powerful computing power.

This is also the reason why in an era of increasingly developed information, retail investors are increasingly unable to compete with institutions, and there is less news about legendary retail investors.

At least ordinary retail investors simply cannot afford the massive costs required for machine learning models to extract valuable information from disordered financial data.

Not just computers, but also related talents.

Especially in quantitative trading, with the help of high-speed computer processing capabilities, buying and selling decisions can even be completed within a few milliseconds.

To put it bluntly, whoever can first grasp and utilize emerging technologies will be able to occupy an advantageous position in the market.

Many leading figures in the technology industry, including Sundar Pichai, have long gone beyond competing for market share in the technology field and have begun to infiltrate the financial field.

To put it bluntly, the purpose of studying quantum supremacy is mostly to serve the financial field.

You have to know that no matter how much quantum computers are hyped, so far they have only been proven to be able to far surpass electronic computers in a few limited fields. And it is extremely difficult to achieve.

After all, there are only so many quantum algorithms.

As for universal quantum computing, we can only say that there is still a long way to go. At present, there are no application scenarios at all.

But finance is the lifeblood of modern capital, especially for Xi’an University, a country founded on finance!
It's not just technology companies like Google, IBM, and Microsoft that are paying attention to quantum computing.

A quick search will reveal that large financial institutions including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc. have already cooperated with these high-tech companies and invested heavily in exploring the application of quantum technology in the financial field.

There is no way, security is the cornerstone of modern finance! In major global trading markets, there are thousands of transactions per second. When high-frequency trading is active, tens of thousands of transactions are common.

Obviously, Qiao Yu's sudden incident scared all the financial tycoons!
It only took two days to calculate two huge Mersenne prime numbers. If this little guy was given more time, what else he could do? These people couldn't even imagine it!

Many of them even have more intelligence than Sundar Pichai!

For example, a certain financial tycoon even got the configuration list of the computer room of Qiao Yu’s Xiyu Technology Service Company!

TaiShan server motherboard, 300 Kunpeng 920 processors, OceanStor storage system...

With this beggar-configured computer room, two new Mersenne prime numbers were calculated in less than two days?
Let's put it this way, after the GIMPS project discovered the 2018st Mersenne prime in 51, it wasn't until October 2024 that the 52nd Mersenne prime was finally discovered.

It took more than six years!
The GIMPS project searches for Mersenne primes by contributing computing resources from volunteers around the world.

There is no way. As the value of n increases, the difficulty of calculation increases exponentially!

Now Qiao Yu announced a new theory, and in just two days, he discovered the 53rd and 54th Mersenne primes!
What is the advantage of quantum computing? This is it!
Although financial tycoons don’t understand mathematics, they have the best mathematicians to help them analyze…

The opinions given by these mathematicians are also very simple. It is not just the horror behind quantum computing, but this computing efficiency means that the new quantum algorithms they develop are even more terrifying.

After all, although the traditional Shor algorithm far surpasses the classical algorithm in factorization, the calculation of Mersenne primes relies more on the Lucas-Lehmer primality test.

Of course, the big guys don’t even need to understand all this. They just need to know whether this technology will pose a risk to their assets.

After a moment of silence, most mathematicians felt that the answer was beyond doubt.

Quietly, the prices of many hard currencies in the global futures markets began to rise strangely.

Especially gold, no, I should say physical gold, it has gone up like crazy...

(End of this chapter)