Huayu 2021: Isn’t he in the technology field?

Chapter 397 Simplifying Complexity, Taking Control

The applause rose and fell like a tide, lasting for nearly a minute before gradually subsiding, but the shock still lingered in the air.

The audience whispered amongst themselves, the discussion never stopping, and almost every face was filled with disbelief.

In the front row of guests, a foreigner wearing glasses and with a serious expression raised his hand.

He is one of the representatives of OpenAI, core engineer Andrew Wilson.

Jiang Qing keenly noticed this movement. He smiled slightly and gestured for the staff to hand him the microphone.

Many people noticed this scene and quickly lowered their voices to focus on it.

Andrew took the microphone and stood up, his face displaying a complex mix of shock, confusion, and admiration.

As the only member of the team who could speak Chinese, he spoke in accented but fairly fluent Chinese, and his voice carried throughout the venue through the speakers.

"Dr. Jiang, first of all, please allow me, on behalf of myself and my colleagues, to express our sincerest amazement at your presentation. Everything that just happened... was simply incredible!"

He paused slightly, seemingly organizing his thoughts and searching for the right words.

"Frankly speaking, based on my understanding of the current development of AI technology, the capabilities you just demonstrated through Wanxiang are at least three years ahead of the world in terms of general perception, or even more."

The room fell silent as everyone held their breath to hear the evaluation from the top engineer from the rival camp.

Andrew's frankness only added weight to his words.

"We are incredibly curious about how you and your team achieved this breakthrough. What is the technological path behind it? If it's convenient, could you share some insights? This might point us all in a new direction."

The tone was purely one of technical curiosity.

This question reflects the sentiments of all the technicians, experts, scholars, and even business giants present.

All eyes were once again on Jiang Qing, awaiting his answer.

The live stream chat was flooded with comments like "Same question!", "Please share!", and "Tech enthusiasts are ecstatic!"

Jiang Qing showed no surprise, having anticipated this question.

He smiled and gestured for Andrew to sit down, speaking as casually as if discussing the weather.

"Mr. Andrew, thank you for your recognition. And thank you for your question."

He strolled to the edge of the stage, getting closer to the audience.

"There's nothing wrong with sharing. Technological advancements stem from the collision and sharing of ideas."

Upon hearing this, everyone in the know immediately became extremely attentive.

The bigwigs in the front row unconsciously adjusted their posture. Academician Yao Qizhi took out his reading glasses and put them on, while Yann LeCun, one of the three giants of deep learning, even took out a small notebook and pen from his pocket.

Those viewers who had been distracted because they couldn't understand the technical details were also affected by the suddenly serious atmosphere and refocused their attention.

Seeing this, Zhou Ye also straightened her back. Although she found the technical terms incomprehensible, she could understand the focused, even eager, expressions on the faces of the important figures in the front row who she usually only saw in the news.

She was murmuring in her heart.

"Even though I don't understand it, it sounds really impressive..."

But he couldn't help but smile proudly, looking at the tall figure on the stage with a sense of honor.

A complex emotion flashed in Chen Duling's cool eyes.

On stage, Jiang Qing exuded confidence and composure, controlling the pace of conversations in the world's top technology fields. He was so dazzling that it was almost unbelievable, making it impossible not to fixate one's gaze on him.

She took a soft breath, suppressing the subtle sense of melancholy, and focused on the present moment.

What he is doing is something that could change the world.

She was proud of him, even though that pride was mixed with other emotions.

Zhang Jingyi opened her eyes wide and stared at Jiang Qing without blinking.

She didn't understand the technical terms, but she could sense the creativity in Jiang Qing's words, which reminded her of Li Xun's reckless spirit, but Jiang Qing was clearly more mature and powerful.

Tian Xiwei swayed slightly in her seat and muttered softly.

"So handsome, he's stolen everyone's heart!"

Her big eyes were full of stars, and she couldn't help but smile.

Meng Ziyi nudged Zhou Ye's arm and lowered her voice.

"Even though I don't understand it, it sounds so cool!"

Her face bore the same pride as Zhou Ye's, but a hint of guilt flashed deep in her eyes. Before Zhou Ye could look over, she quickly turned her gaze back to the stage.

Wang Churan clasped her hands tightly on her knees, her heart surging like a tsunami, but she tried her best to maintain a proper smile on her face.

Her gaze followed Jiang Qing's every move with almost greedy intensity, and her intense admiration made her tremble.

Li Yitong, with her crescent-shaped eyes, looked at Jiang Qing, who was speaking eloquently and confidently on stage, and couldn't help but smile.

She leaned back in her chair, relaxed, thinking that she absolutely had to make him keep this outfit as a souvenir, and next time...

Thinking of certain indescribable scenes, she looked around guiltily and unconsciously rubbed her knees awkwardly.

My brother has such irresistible charm!
Liu Haocun subtly adjusted his posture to make himself appear more graceful in the crowd.

After all, it's being broadcast live; what if someone catches it on camera?

Zhao Jinmai sat up straight obediently, her little hands on her knees, like a primary school student listening attentively to a lesson.

She tried hard to understand Jiang Qing's words, but quickly gave up.

It's too difficult, I can't understand it at all...

Zhang Ruonan smiled brightly; if it weren't for the inappropriate occasion, she would have already taken out her phone to take a picture.

Despite being wrapped in thick disguise, Dilraba's eyes shone brightly, making the man on stage appear incredibly handsome!
As for Jing Tian, ​​she wanted to go to the restroom...

On stage, Jiang Qing had already begun his sharing, speaking casually as if he were chatting with someone.

"As everyone probably knows, training a large model is like teaching a particularly smart but somewhat stubborn student."

He used a vivid analogy, which drew knowing chuckles from the audience.

“In the traditional way, you might want to break down every step of the problem-solving process and feed it to the problem, telling it how to do this step and how to do that step.”

Jiang Qing imitated the strict teacher's manner, making everyone laugh again.

"But our team at Wuwen believes that sometimes micromanaging can stifle creativity. So..."

He changed the subject, his eyes sharpening.

"We changed our approach. We used a method called GRPO, which you can think of as a group relative strategy optimization method."

Jiang Qing deliberately slowed down his speech to ensure that even non-professionals could follow his train of thought.

"Simply put, we don't care much about the thought process behind it, whether it uses the multiplication table or a bunch of equations. We only care if the final answer is correct. If the answer is correct, we get candy; if the answer is wrong, we don't get candy."

He shrugged, his tone humorous.

"It's that simple and straightforward."

Many technical experts in the audience looked thoughtful.

This reinforcement learning approach, which focuses solely on the final result, sounds simple, but it is extremely difficult to implement in practice, requiring a profound understanding of the design and optimization of reward signals.

"We found that when you only tell a student the goal without restricting the path, the student will come up with all sorts of ingenious solutions, sometimes even those we hadn't thought of, in order to get the candy."

Jiang Qing smiled and pointed to her head.

"It has evolved a more advanced reasoning ability. This is called... well, it doesn't matter if it's a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches mice."

A down-to-earth proverb drew laughter from the entire audience.

Whether they were tech geeks who understood or ordinary viewers who didn't quite grasp the meaning, they were amused by this clever analogy and also understood the core idea.

Academician Yao Qizhi smiled and whispered a sigh to Huang Tiejun beside him.

"Simplifying complexity is the ultimate sophistication! This idea is brilliant!"

"That's right, this idea is brilliant!"

Huang Tiejun's face was full of agreement, and his eyes never left the stage while he spoke, which made Yao Qizhi shake his head and laugh.

After a brief pause in their laughter, Jiang Qing and the others continued sharing. "Of course, having ideas alone isn't enough; you also need a strong physique. We designed a new brain structure for Wanxiang, called MLA, which stands for Multidimensional Attention Mechanism."

He tapped his temple.

"This new structure is more efficient, which is equivalent to doing more work with a smaller brain capacity, i.e., parameters, and performing better. We did not blindly pile up parameters to pursue that scary number."

Upon hearing this, Li Yanhong leaned forward slightly, his eyes serious.

Parameter size has always been one of the key indicators for measuring the capabilities of large models. Wuwen Technology has taken a different approach and made breakthroughs in algorithm and architecture optimization, which means lower training and inference costs and broader application prospects.

He whispered his amazement to Ma Huateng beside him.

"If this is true, the commercial potential is enormous!"

Ma Huateng nodded solemnly, his fingers tapping unconsciously on the armrest as he quickly calculated the implications.

"There's also data."

Jiang Qing's sharing didn't stop.

"As everyone knows, training AI requires massive amounts of data, but not all data is high-quality nourishment. Our approach is more like refining data than piling it up."

He made a refining motion.

"We have a technology that can automatically sift out the most valuable and essential fragments from the ocean of data, like panning for gold, and feed them directly to the model. This naturally greatly improves training efficiency."

Upon hearing this, Zhang Yiming couldn't help but take a deep breath.

Data cleaning and labeling have always been among the most time-consuming and labor-intensive parts of AI training. If Wuwen Technology's method can truly automate this process efficiently, its value will be immeasurable.

"Finally, there's the project implementation."

Jiang Qing's tone was filled with pride.

"Our team built a super factory production line, using technologies such as 3D parallelism and INT4 quantization..."

Seeing that many people in the audience looked confused, he immediately smiled and waved his hand.

"Okay, to put it simply, we're trying to find ways to make thousands of graphics cards work together more efficiently, reduce waste, make computing faster, and at the same time save electricity and costs. That way, the final product will feel fast and cheap to everyone."

He explained the extremely complex engineering optimization in the simplest language, making the benefits understandable even to non-professional viewers.

Lower latency, lower cost.

Below the stage, engineers, experts, and scholars from top global technology companies and research institutions listened with rapt attention, occasionally letting out soft exclamations of amazement.

"Rewarding only the correctness of the final answer...that's too audacious!"

"MLA architecture? Never heard of it before, looks like they developed it themselves!"

"Data distillation...automatically identifying high-value data...this idea is so clear!"

"How can they maintain this level of precision by combining 3D parallelism with INT4? Their engineering optimization capabilities are terrifying!"

"Incredible... This is simply a systemic and comprehensive innovation!"

Yann LeCun scribbled rapidly in his notebook, his brow furrowed, sometimes suddenly realizing something, sometimes falling into new confusion.

Yoshua Bengio and his companion exchanged opinions in hushed tones, both of them wearing expressions as if they had discovered a new continent.

Academician Yao Qizhi was beaming with pride, repeatedly praising those around him.

"The younger generation is truly formidable! This is a tremendous breakthrough for us in the field of AI!"

Zhou Ye watched as the usually serious and rigid experts below the stage became as excited as children seeing a new toy. Although she still didn't quite understand what Jiang Qing had said, a sense of pride that "my man has created something incredibly amazing" was almost overflowing.

She couldn't resist taking out her phone and secretly snapping a picture of the experts listening attentively in the audience. She then quickly snapped a profile picture of Jiang Qing speaking eloquently on stage. She felt a sweet warmth in her heart, as if she were floating on air.

Chen Duling looked at the man on the stage who spoke eloquently and explained complex technologies in a simple, easy-to-understand, and captivating way, her eyes softening.

He was always so radiant, but...

She sighed softly, looking dejected.

Zhang Jingyi felt full of energy, as if she had a part in Jiang Qing's success.

Those eyes, described by netizens as "eyes that know how to love," were bright and full of admiration.

Tian Xiwei excitedly pinched her thigh, trying to control her volume.

"Our Dr. Jiang is incredibly powerful! Everyone kneel down before me... you bastards..."

She kept muttering to herself.

While clapping along, Meng Ziyi secretly glanced at Zhou Ye and saw her face full of pride. Although she was happy, a sense of guilt welled up in her heart the next moment, so she quickly shook her head and continued to focus on watching the stage.

Wang Churan had to use almost all her strength to stop herself from getting up and cheering.

She looked at Jiang Qing with a fervent gaze, as if she were looking up at a god.

Li Yitong suddenly had a mischievous thought: should she tease him after the press conference to see if he could still maintain this composure?
Jiang Qing's sharing was insightful yet easy to understand, and her humorous metaphors and candid attitude won the favor of the entire audience.

When he finally finished speaking, there was a brief silence in the room as everyone was still processing the information storm he had brought.

Then, thunderous applause erupted again, this time more enthusiastic and longer than ever before, filled with respect!
Academician Yao Qizhi was the first to stand up and applaud, followed by other leading academics in China, such as Huang Tiejun and Zhou Zhihua.

Then, international representatives such as Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio paid the highest tribute from the academic community to the young people on stage.

At this moment, Andrew from OpenAI also recovered from his shock.

His face was filled with complex emotions: shock, admiration, and a hint of resentment.

He raised his hand again, and after receiving a signal from Jiang Qing, he took the microphone from the staff member. His voice trembled slightly with excitement.

"Dr. Jiang, your sharing is... truly amazing. Please forgive my intrusion, but I have another question, which may involve trade secrets. If you feel uncomfortable answering it, you are free to leave it unanswered."

He took a deep breath and asked one of the questions that most of the business tycoons present were most concerned about.

"We...we want to know, how much computing power did Wuwen Technology invest in training a model like Wanxiang? Or, roughly what is the order of magnitude of its training cost?"

After he finished speaking, he put down the microphone and stared at Jiang Qing with anticipation.

Everyone held their breath and looked at Jiang Qing.

The bigwigs stared intently, and experts from home and abroad pricked up their ears. Even Zhou Ye and others sensed that this question was of great importance and nervously watched the stage.

However, Jiang Qing did not show any sign of difficulty when faced with this question.

Instead, he raised the corners of his mouth slightly, revealing a meaningful smile.

His gaze swept across the entire room, taking in everyone's tension, curiosity, and anticipation.

That smile sent a jolt through many of the people present!
Li Yanhong frowned.

Ma Huateng pushed up his glasses.

Zhang Yiming leaned forward, staring intently at Jiang Qing on the stage.

Yao Qizhi looked curious and gripped the pen in his hand tightly.

Several top experts abroad also realized that something was wrong.

Zhou Ye leaned close to Meng Ziyi's ear and whispered.

"The way he's smiling... I feel like something's not right."

"Yes, it feels like... he was waiting for someone to ask that?"

Meng Ziyi knows that scoundrel on stage all too well; he's definitely doing this on purpose!

He used this kind of smile last time he did something naughty!

She was in a terrible state that time!

Andrew's heart skipped a beat, and he suddenly had a very bad feeling.

The noise at the scene gradually subsided, and countless eyes focused on Jiang Qing, waiting for his answer.

What exactly is the cost of such a powerful phenomenon?

The comments section visibly slowed down, eagerly awaiting Jiang Qing's response.

Amidst the anticipation of everyone, Jiang Qing slowly raised her hand...

(End of this chapter)