Huayu: I'm reborn, but you still force me to be a scumbag?

Chapter 610 A Different Kind of Liberal Arts Student

Li Wenwen sat at her workstation, seemingly diligently organizing the schedule for their company's upcoming "Knight Live Streaming Platform," but her mind was elsewhere.

On the 21-inch computer screen in front of her, a large Excel spreadsheet was filled with information such as the confirmed schedules of the anchors, the planning of the first broadcast theme and activities, the content classification themes, the technical beta test time, and the final online order. However, her eyes seemed to ignore it, occasionally moving upwards to look at the office area, at the room where the curtains were drawn and the door was closed.

It's not that she has a problem with concentration. In fact, no one in the entire office is having trouble concentrating. For each of them, focusing on one thing for a mere eight hours is an incredibly simple task.

However, at this moment, everyone in Li Wenwen's field of vision was doing the same thing as her. They would work in front of their computers for a few minutes, then in unison look up, gaze in that direction for a while, and then lower their heads again.

no way,
Just an hour ago, when that person, whom I had only ever seen in movies and magazines, suddenly walked into the office area, who, including herself, remembered the theories she had previously spouted about Peking University, Nanjing University, colleagues, and bosses?

At that moment,

When faced with that man waving,
In this room, these Peking University students, the "other people's children" from childhood, have so many awards and certificates that they could fill an entire wall—these are the pride of heaven.

My reaction at the time was no different from that of those star-struck fans who might not have even graduated from junior high school and whose greatest achievement in life might be a QQ level with moon and sun icons.

This is not surprising.

Because what she said about growing up watching his movies sounds funny, but it's really not an exaggeration at all.

Even if these people born in the 80s and 90s haven't seen Joker in the cinema, most of them have been captivated by Edward Cullen's stunning looks or deeply impressed by the fantastical beauty of Inception.

Even if some students come from poor families, or have never been to the movies because they are focused on their studies, what about that martial arts drama that replaced "The Legend of the White Snake" and "Princess Pearl" and is still rebroadcast on various local TV stations every summer?

Who hasn't sat in front of the TV on a sweltering afternoon, just to see him in his white coat?

These Peking University students, no matter how you look at it, are all young people in their twenties. How could they possibly remain calm when they see a fictional character from the TV show come to life in front of them?
Li Wenwen kept glancing at the computer screen and then at the conference room.

A while later, Liu Qi, the company's chief technologist, came out.

Speaking of this person, probably everyone at Peking University knows him.

Chen Nuo's fellow townsman, neighbor in the same examination room, and a prized possession of the professors at Peking University's School of Information Science and Technology. A few years ago, he single-handedly secured a million-yuan scholarship for the neglected school.

Although he was a bit eccentric in his speech and manner, there were plenty of people like that at Peking University. In fact, everyone, including her, quite liked this senior. The main reason was that he had transcended the cutthroat world of academic elites and reached the level of a genius, no longer competing with anyone else. Therefore, his eccentricities became a unique charm, making this genius seem unfathomable yet somewhat endearing.

As soon as Senior Liu came out, he began to straighten out the discipline of the technical department. With just a few words, everyone dared not slack off anymore and started working obediently.

Li Wenwen couldn't help but feel a chill, and dared not let her mind wander any longer, her gaze returning to the computer screen in front of her.

Each cell in front of me was marked with a different color: red for a pending schedule, green for a confirmed schedule, and dark blue for the debut broadcast plans of signed anchors.

Every single streamer listed in the table was personally negotiated and secured by her. As a new platform starting from scratch, this sounds incredibly difficult, but Li Wenwen found it quite simple. Initially, there were some challenges because the gaming experts on YY and various forums either thought she was a fraud or that she was weaving a fantastical myth.

But later, once she mastered the knack, her work became exceptionally smooth. After all, persuading these middle school dropouts who played video games to sign contracts was much easier than persuading those stubborn professors at Peking University to allocate funds for student activities, or balancing the interests of various factions within the student union. It was almost as easy as writing a ten-thousand-word paper without a single typo, or pulling three all-nighters during final exam week and getting the highest grade in the entire department.

"Li Wenwen, come in here for a moment."

Just as she was getting into her work, someone suddenly called her name.

Li Wenwen looked up in surprise and asked, "President Qi, did you call me?"

"Okay. Come in."

"Oh well."

Li Wenwen agreed, stood up somewhat confused, and followed Liu Xuechang into the conference room.

After that, the initial slight unease and nervousness quickly dissipated within a few minutes.

Then, the most famous female scholar in the Chinese Department of Peking University in recent years showed a thoughtful expression.

……

Chen Nuo felt that the most difficult part of talking to Liu Qi was not anything else, but that he had to constantly overcome the aggressiveness that the man often revealed in his words.

Like what,
"I know that Nvidia's latest Tesla K40 GPU costs about $5,500. I need 2000-2500, so Chen Nuo, you should know how much it will cost in total, right?"

Damn it, what does he know?!
All I know is that it's probably around 1000 million or 2000 million. In just a few seconds, without even pressing the calculator, what else could it be?
He truly deserves the title of someone who can memorize a nine-digit QQ number after hearing it read only once.

However, compared to the fact that almost one person spent several years developing an algorithm that Zuckerberg couldn't solve even after expending countless resources in his previous life, remembering a QQ number is nothing.

The question now is, did this guy actually manage to do it? Is it necessary to spend tens of millions to verify his reliability?
Although Chen Nuo already had a plan, when the moment came, he decided to let his overheated brain cool down a bit.

He ignored Liu Qi and instead turned his gaze to the girl with the ponytail who had been sitting silently to the side for more than ten minutes. He smiled and said, "Li Wenwen, I'm sorry to have kept you waiting."

Li Wenwen came to her senses and smiled, "It's alright, Mr. Chen."

"Actually, President Qi has been mentioning you to me, saying that you are very capable. He rarely comes to the company, but you are the one who manages everything from top to bottom, and you handle it very well."

"Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Chen. However, although you don't come to the company often, in the hearts of all the colleagues, you are the soul of the company, while Mr. Qi is the skeleton. Without the two of you, no matter what I do, I will not be able to unite everyone in the company as one."

Look, look!
They're both from Peking University, so why is there such a big difference?
At this point, Chen Nuo might still have a 1% chance of deciding whether or not to invest money, but he was absolutely 100% determined to keep this seemingly ordinary girl.

He immediately smiled and said, "Actually, the reason I asked Mr. Qi to wake you up was to talk to you about your future career plans. I heard from Mr. Qi that you are planning to take the civil service exam after graduating with your master's degree?"

Li Wenwen nodded and said, "Yes."

Chen Nuo smiled and asked, "Is it possible for you to stay?"

Li Wenwen replied, "Yes."

Chen Nuo said, "Indeed, it's normal for you to have doubts. I admit that the company doesn't seem very professional right now, and you may not understand the business we're doing, but... uh, what did you say?"

"Mr. Chen, I said I am very confident in the company's future development and I am willing to stay with the company. However, at the same time, I also hope to get a suitable position and reasonable compensation. Firstly, this will allow me to give full play to my strengths and better contribute my value to the company. Secondly, it will also allow me to gain happiness and a sense of accomplishment in my work, so as not to waste my youth and prime years."

Chen Nuo was sure she hadn't misheard. She turned to look at Qi Yuntian, and realized this was completely different from what she had expected.

He immediately asked, "What position do you want?"

"Before officially joining the company, I hope to maintain my current position. After joining, I hope to serve as the general manager's assistant. After two years, I hope the company will evaluate me and give me the opportunity to become General Manager Qi's deputy."

"Deputy, does that mean the vice president?"

"Yes, Mr. Chen. I am already 23 years old this year, and I will be 25 in two years. I believe that by then, my personality will be more mature, and through two years of honing my skills, my abilities should have also improved significantly. I think that at 25, I am fully capable of taking on this position. Of course, if you or Mr. Qi are dissatisfied with me in any way during my work, or if I ultimately fail to meet your requirements, I will voluntarily accept a pay cut or demotion, or submit my resignation, and will never cause any burden or trouble to the company."

After listening to Li Wenwen's words, Chen Nuo had only one thought in his mind.

Damn, is this how Peking University students apply for jobs? He'd interviewed plenty of people in his past life, like real estate agents, and some of them he thought were quite capable, but compared to this, they were nothing!
But, a vice president or something?
Isn't this taking a bit too big a step? After all, if things really went according to his plan, this company would be far more powerful than any other company like Huanxin. Can this young woman in her early twenties really handle it?

He was thinking about how to reply to Li Wenwen.
Liu Qi suddenly interjected, "Li Wenwen, you're wrong. Based on the rate of development in a person's twenties, your growth potential curve has already begun to flatten out. There's a 75% chance that you'll reach a bottleneck within two years."

Li Wenwen said, "Senior, you're wrong. You only focus on the average curve, but my data points have always been above the standard deviation since I was 3 years old."

I was the former vice president of the Peking University Student Union. My organizational and resource allocation abilities have been put to the most complex and rigorous practical tests on campus.

You see human growth as linear. But I believe that human growth can increase exponentially when one encounters a platform that can amplify one's abilities.

Two years is enough time for me to go from being familiar with a system to building a system. This has nothing to do with age, but only with IQ and learning efficiency.

Senior, since you believe your tensor decomposition model can surpass traditional algorithms within two years, why don't you believe a highly efficient human brain can surpass job requirements within two years?
Or are you saying that you don't actually believe your model can succeed, and are just using your skepticism towards me to mask your own uncertainty about your own technology?

Chen Nuo's mouth dropped open in astonishment.
Liu Qi shook his head and said, "You don't understand. My model is guaranteed to succeed. I have completed countless derivations and verifications in mathematics and logic. Its theoretical foundation is impeccable."

Li Wenwen smiled and said, "That might be true. However, being mathematically flawless does not equate to being infallible in engineering."

As you just mentioned, your model requires two thousand GPUs, tens of millions of user data points, and two to three years for training. Any disruption in funding, data availability, or timeline at any stage could lead to the model's failure. From this perspective, your seemingly flawless approach and its inevitable failure are essentially the same in terms of project management risk.

Senior Liu Qi, do you think I'm right?

The meeting room fell silent.

Seeing Liu Qi's speechless expression, Chen Nuo immediately closed his own slightly open mouth and asked, "Little Li, you... can you understand?"

Li Wenwen smiled and said, "Mr. Chen, although I am a Chinese literature major, I don't just study Chinese. In my spare time, out of curiosity, I have also audited Professor Wang's courses in the School of Information Science and Technology, and studied some advanced mathematics and statistics courses on my own."

Of course, I am not as proficient as you and senior student Liu Qi in this area, but I have read "Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning" and even pondered the parts about Bayesian, Hidden Markov Models and sequence prediction.

Most importantly, what Liu Qi just said didn't actually involve much professional knowledge, and he avoided some of the key details. So, I think anyone who isn't completely stupid should be able to understand what he was saying.

However, precisely because of this, I actually have some doubts about whether Senior Liu Qi was telling the truth. Is his model really that reliable? I think Mr. Chen, you should be more cautious.”

"I'm just telling the truth, I'm not trying to downplay the issue."

For the first time, Chen Nuo saw an expression on Liu Qi's face that could be described as 'indignant'. "It's Chen Nuo..."

“Yes, it’s me. I underestimated you, Li Wenwen.” Chen Nuo interrupted, laughing as he said, “I originally wanted to take this opportunity to show you the bright future of the company, so I asked Liu Qi to keep it simple. I didn’t expect that I had underestimated the talented woman from the Chinese Department of Peking University. Haha, don’t take offense. I believe that Xiao Liu’s research is not a lie.”

Li Wenwen suddenly realized, "So that's how it is. No wonder what you were discussing seemed so simple. Mr. Chen, thank you, but it's really unnecessary. You could have discussed it in more depth. Although there might be parts I don't understand, I can usually remember more than 95% of what I hear. I'll go back to my dorm tonight and do some research online, and then I'll understand."

"Hehe, you should have said so earlier, cough cough."

Chen Nuo coughed twice and said, "President Qi, I think Li Wenwen is quite good. What about you? Would you like to give your opinion?"

Qi Yuntian said, "Then I'll say two things. First, Li Wenwen, since you said that in terms of the risk factor of project management, the success or failure of this model is 50/50, what do you think we should do next? Should we give up? Tell me your opinion."

Li Wenwen said, "Of course we can't give up. I was actually a little emotional when I questioned Liu Qi earlier, but based on the rumors at school and my observations of him over the past year at the company, I think the chances of him lying are very small..."

“Of course, I never lie!” Liu Qi exclaimed excitedly.

“...But we can’t rule out the possibility that he’s exaggerating,” Li Wenwen added.

Liu Qi's face immediately fell again.

Li Wenwen ignored this and continued, "Therefore, I suggest that we should not immediately invest heavily in building a GPU cluster. Instead, we should first utilize our existing server resources and concentrate those resources on conducting an A/B comparison test among the initial users of 'Knight Live.' Let Liu Xuechang's algorithm and our original recommendation algorithm engage in a small-scale data competition, using real user data to verify the actual performance of Liu Xuechang's model in commercial applications, before deciding whether to make the next huge investment."

Damn it, why didn't I think of that?
Chen Nuo suddenly realized what was happening.

Surprisingly, he was originally thinking about whether he should still go and collaborate with Zhang Yimi to use his Toutiao account for training data.

However, this live streaming platform that Qi Yuntian inexplicably created is actually a pretty good tool for algorithm verification and data collection.

If enough people are attracted to watch the live stream and the platform has a large enough daily page view, then it can be used as a data training ground for the model.

Qi Yuntian nodded and said, "Good suggestion. Now, the second question: if we want to buy 2000-2500 Tesla K40 GPUs, each costing 5500, how many US dollars would it cost in total? And how much would that be in RMB?"

李雯雯立刻说道：“1100万美元到1375万美元之间。如果按照现在6.15的汇率计算，就是人民币6765万到8456万之间。”

“Very good, I have no problem with that.” Qi Yuntian turned his head and said, “I think Li Wenwen’s job requirements are worth considering. What do you say, Mr. Chen?”

Chen Nuo frowned, pondered for a moment, and asked, "Wenwen, aren't you a humanities student? How come you seem to be quite good at math?"

“I’m a liberal arts student, Mr. Chen.” Li Wenwen shook her head and said, “I’m very bad at math, it has always been my weakness. I only scored 143 on the college entrance exam, which almost dragged me down.”

“I……………………Okay, Li Wenwen, I agree to your request. Welcome to stay. I look forward to the day you become the company's vice president.”

"Thank you, Mr. Chen. I'm looking forward to it too."

……

……

As soon as it got dark, Chen Nuo started Tong Liya's Wrangler and returned to Tianzhu No. 1.

Tong Liya had prepared a large table of dishes and was resting her chin on her hand, absentmindedly watching TV. When she heard the sound of a car outside, she suddenly stood up and ran to the French windows to look out.

As soon as she saw the car stop and the person get out of the driver's seat, she immediately turned around, opened the door, and rushed out.

But halfway there, she stopped, stood in the garden, smiled at the other person, and revealed two small canine teeth.

Chen Nuo walked over and said, "There's no food. I'm starving."

"It's done, but it's getting a bit cold. I'll go in and warm it up in a bit."

"Never mind, no need to heat it up, just eat it as is. Someone once said that I'm hard to compromise, I've decided to change that."

Tong Liya smiled immediately, turned her head to look at her, and asked, "Did something good happen to you when you went out? Are you in a good mood?"

Chen Nuo smiled and said, "Indeed, there's good news. We've discovered a talented person. By the way, did you study science or humanities in high school?"

"Liberal arts."

"Let me test you. If we want to buy 2000-2500 of something, and each item costs $5500, how many US dollars would it cost in total? And how much would that be in RMB?"

Tong Liya said, "You don't know this? My phone is on the table and I haven't taken it out yet. I'll calculate it for you as soon as I get back."

Chen Nuo nodded and said, "No need. Hmm, it seems it's not my problem. Indeed, there is a difference between liberal arts students."

"What do you mean?"

"It's nothing special. Wow, it smells delicious! What's this? XJ roasted lamb leg? How did you make it?"

"Hehe, use an oven. Although it won't taste as good as baking over an open flame, it should still taste pretty good. I've baked it a few times."

It was indeed delicious. Not only the lamb leg, but all the Xinjiang dishes on the table were very tasty. Chen Nuo ate until his belly was round, and Tong Liya's eyes were practically closed from smiling.

The woman rested her hands on her chin, looked at him, and asked softly, "Can you stay a few more days this time?"

“This time? No, I have to leave tomorrow.”

"Oh." Tong Liya forced a smile, trying hard not to show her disappointment.

Chen Nuo glanced at her and said, "I'm going to Africa..."

This time, Chen Nuo revealed what he hadn't said before. Tong Liya covered her mouth, widened her eyes, and said, "Is it that serious? Then you should spend a few more days with her and let her relax over there."

Chen Nuo smiled and said, "I won't be staying for more than a few days. I'll be back to continue eating your roasted lamb leg."

"Ah!" Tong Liya's expression immediately lit up with surprise and delight. "Really?"

"Well, I can't help it, I have things to do. Otherwise, I would like to stay there for a few more days."

"Hehehehe." Although Tong Liya knew it was wrong, she still couldn't help but let out a silly laugh. After laughing for a while, she realized she was in a bit of a hurry. She felt shy and her face was getting hot. To cover it up, she asked, "What do you need me to do? Do you need my help?"

Chen Nuo laughed and said, "You want to help? Sure. I'll download a game on your laptop later, and you can practice it over the next few days. Also, buy some better headphones and a microphone, and I'll count you in."

(End of this chapter)