Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 346 Crimson and Wenxin's Words
"Not worse than GPT?" Xu Xian was a little surprised after hearing this, but then she realized that it was Ran Ge's masterpiece and she was no longer surprised.

Is it strange that they were able to land on the moon in a year and lead the Chinese version of GPT?

Novels need to be logical; reality never needs to be logical.

Real-world geniuses need even less to talk about logic.

"Okay, send me your resume. I can only say one thing to Ran Ge on your behalf: This is my college roommate. Give him a chance if we are on equal footing."

"I can't guarantee anything more."

After thinking for a moment, Xu Xian said.

Zhao Songxia said with delight, "Thank you, Xu Xian. Next time you come to Yanjing, I can play the role of Bai Suzhen."

He knew very well that this was the limit of what Xu Xian could do, and he wouldn't believe it if the other party said something like "I'll take care of it."

Xu Xian knew the other party was joking and said speechlessly, "Get lost, it's a small matter. I'm not even sure if Ran-ge will see this, and I'm not even sure if I can help you."

"Once you're sure you can stay with Ran-ge, then you can prepare the props, okay?"

Zhao Songxia said, "Xu Xian, you're even more perverted, you've brought all the props!"

Seohyun explained, "I was talking about cosplay props, what are you thinking!"

Later, every initial employee who stayed with DeepRed Technology was poached by Zuckerberg with starting salaries of tens of millions of dollars and green cards, earning the company the nickname "cradle of billionaires."

Of course, nobody knows now that employees of large-scale models will be so valuable in the future.

And this future is just around the corner.

Later, Xu Xiancai realized that his words seemed to be worth more than a thousand pieces of gold per word.

Having received Xu Xian's promise, Zhao Songxia began preparing his resume. He planned to attach a review article on artificial intelligence that he had written himself, as part of demonstrating his abilities.

A resume alone is still too weak. He wouldn't mind doing it even if it could increase his chances of success by a tiny bit.

Smart people know that they should fight when the time is right. It's fine to lie low most of the time, but once an opportunity arises, they absolutely cannot miss it because they haven't tried their best.

Meanwhile, Xu Xian was waiting for Zhao Songxia to send her the resume before forwarding it to Lin Ran.

While browsing Zhihu, Xu Xian suspected that Zhihu was eavesdropping on his phone call. He had just finished talking with Zhao Songxia when Zhihu pushed the question "How to evaluate GPT, why GPT was not born in China" to his homepage.

This is an answer that has received over 10,000 likes:
"Thank you for the invitation. I can only say that America is still the world's number one in leading technology, and it remains a beacon in guiding technological development."

You can say that America is showing signs of fatigue, its empire is in its twilight, its control over the earth is far less than before, its geopolitical maneuvering is also much worse, and Wall Street and the deep state of Washington are devouring the country. But you cannot deny that the country is still leading the world in technology.

Early major domestic internet companies were localized products of Americana Corporation. After the advent of the iPhone and the advent of the smartphone era, domestic Android brands began to rise. After Tesla appeared, various new domestic forces emerged one after another.

America pioneered this, and China followed, caught up, and even surpassed it. Currently, we are extremely lacking in groundbreaking achievements that go from 0 to 1.

Taking the Apollo moon landing and Burning 1 as examples, we have indeed accomplished feats that even America could not achieve. We even set foot on the soil of the lunar south pole for the first time, leaving a permanent base there. I have no doubt that with the cooperation between Burning and China's aerospace industry, that place can be transformed into a lunar base in the future.

However, the former relied on America's Apollo moon landing in the 1960s, while the latter is a product of SpaceX's Falcon 9, and we have been following it all along.

In this regard, America had GPS first, and then we followed suit and developed BeiDou.

I also believe that in the near future, China's domestically produced large-scale models will be as easy to use as GPT, or even better, but we are still following behind.

I'm not saying that following others is bad; following others is certainly good. Following the mature paths of others is the research method with the highest return on investment, which is very suitable for developing countries like ours.

In other words, other countries can't even follow China's path.

But I've always been curious about one thing: what will we do when America runs out of ideas and no longer has any new breakthroughs? Can we really have a constant stream of original creations?

Unlike GZ or HGD on foreign websites, I don't always escalate issues to a very high level. We don't have that, and neither do Japan and Europe. Does that mean only America's election is an election, and the elections in other countries aren't?

I believe the reason why the most important technological innovations in the past originated in America is fundamentally due to two points. First, it has the world's largest consumer market and a large enough population, which means that users will pay for your technological innovations. In the 1990s, the Palm computers could easily sell millions of units. Back then in China, each unit cost $5000. Let alone millions, selling even 10,000 units would be considered impressive. The PDA also laid the foundation for the later emergence of the smartphone era.

Secondly, America has the world's most powerful capital market. After the Bretton Woods Agreement was overturned, the over-issued US dollars continued to flow into Silicon Valley, forming an unprecedented positive cycle: innovation-financing-listing-financial freedom. Even during the past period of mass entrepreneurship in China, the capital market did not need innovation but money. What are the benchmarks for your business in Silicon Valley? How to implement it locally? What makes you think you can beat the big companies?
A huge consumer market and the most powerful capital market have jointly created America's innovation miracle. Now the question we need to ask is, how do we create our own innovation miracle?

Can we create the kind of environment that America can create?

If not, then we can only rely on flashes of genius, like the "Burning God." I believe that one day, he too will bring unprecedented innovation, but can we continue to produce geniuses of the "Burning God's" caliber?

Of course, there are also some answers from people who constantly reflect on their own actions, which makes Seohyun angry.

"Thanks for the invitation. I've been working with Brother Ran on artificial intelligence lately, and all I want to say is: Listen to the dragon's roar."

"Listen to the dragon's roar!"

Because of her relationship with Lin Ran, Xu Xian has become a popular figure on Zhihu, with her followers growing from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

Zhihu's fan base hasn't become inflated; having several hundred thousand followers already qualifies one as a top blogger.

After his answer was posted, it quickly received over a thousand likes, and the comments within the answer were all:

"When will it be released? I can't wait!"

"I almost forgot that Ran Shen also studied artificial intelligence, and even has a PhD in Graph AI. I look forward to Ran Shen giving us a surprise!"

"Is it another dragon's roar? Am I too late? I was ready to participate in the roaring."

"You're the spokesperson for the Burning God, right?"

Indeed, the dragon's roar will soon be heard, but the first dragon to roar will be Baidu.

In mid-March, Baidu held a product launch event at its headquarters building in Yanjing. The spacious auditorium was packed with hundreds of media reporters, investors, and tech enthusiasts, all eagerly anticipating the surprises Baidu would bring.

On the stage, a huge LED screen flashed blue and white light, with the words "Wenxin Yiyan: The New Era of Intelligence" displayed in the center.

In the audience, reporters in the front row were busy adjusting their cameras, while the audience in the back row were whispering about the hype sparked by ChatGPT.

"Baidu has caught up this time. Being the first in China to produce a large-scale artificial intelligence model means that all those years of investing in AI have not been in vain."

Baidu's "All in AI" strategy began in early 2017 when former Microsoft executive Qi Lu joined Baidu as Chief Technology Officer. Less than 24 hours after taking office, Robin Lim and Lu Qi sat together in front of the media to answer questions. The "All in AI" strategy was subsequently finalized and first announced at the Baidu AI Developer Conference in July of that year.

"Has Baidu collaborated with Mr. Lin of Apollo Technology? I've seen online that Mr. Lin seems to have also worked on a large model."

"No, I've never heard of it before. But in the field of AI, Baidu's technological reserves, talent reserves, and deep experience are probably something even President Lin can't compare to. After all, he's just one person."

"The most important thing is to buy Baidu stock. When Nasdaq opens tonight, Baidu stock will definitely surge."

Robin, the founder of Baidu, wearing a white shirt, stood in front of a backdrop displaying the words "Wenxin Yiyan Press Conference" with his signature smile.

(The Wenxin Yiyan press conference on March 16, 2023)
Robin looked incredibly excited; in his view, this was a chance for Baidu to turn things around!
For months, the team worked day and night to develop a large-scale ERNIE model with a huge number of parameters, which integrates knowledge graphs and multimodal capabilities to handle multiple complex tasks.

The senior executive in charge of internal development assured him that, in terms of Chinese proficiency, our Wenxin Yiyan is definitely no weaker than GPT!
But facing the pressure of the global AI race, he knew that this press conference could not afford any mishaps.

If the demonstration goes smoothly, it will be a milestone for Baidu AI; if something goes wrong, the stock price will collapse.

He took a deep breath and adjusted the microphone.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the launch event of Wenxin Yiyan!" Li Yanhong's loud and confident voice echoed in the auditorium.

The audience erupted in enthusiastic applause, and the live chat was filled with cheers for China and Baidu.

He paused, then continued, "ChatGPT ushered in the era of generative AI, but Baidu released the ERNIE model as early as 2019."

Today, Wenxin Yiyan is here! It is not a simple copy, but an innovation based on the Wenxin big model, which can perform well in literature, logic and multimodal generation.

Of course, it's not perfect yet, but we will continue to iterate.

Chief Technology Officer Wang Haifeng, sitting in the audience, nodded, holding a remote control in his hand, ready to assist with the demonstration.

Lu Qi left Baidu in 2019, which was widely regarded as a failure of Baidu's self-rescue efforts.

Wang Haifeng thought to himself: Our model is ahead in Chinese language understanding because it incorporates a massive amount of local data, but the demonstration must be intuitive so that ordinary people can feel the advantages.

Li Yanhong walked to the demonstration stage in the center of the stage, where a large-screen computer was placed. He typed on the keyboard, and a simple chat interface popped up on the screen.

"To save time, we prepared a pre-recorded demo video, but the effect is absolutely realistic," he explained, while pressing the play button.

The entire process quickly disappointed the audience.

It simply showed a scripted video of interacting with artificial intelligence.

Furthermore, some of the questions raised in the video seem quite simple and can be answered using typical search engine services, such as: "Which region of China is the author of 'The Three-Body Problem' from?"

"Is Robin treating us like idiots?"

"No, if it's just this kind of function, why would I use AI? What are the advantages of AI compared to a search engine?"

"Baidu has resorted to some unscrupulous means to win the title of the first domestically produced large model."

This performance greatly disappointed investors. Within 10 minutes of the press conference starting, Baidu's stock price plummeted by 10% in trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, wiping out over $40 billion in market value.

"This looks like it was pre-recorded; so far it's just a PowerPoint presentation."

These demonstrations do not appear to be spontaneous.

It neither referenced anything they extracted from the database, nor their model, nor did it compare it to ChatGPT.

All of this is very vague and theoretical.

"If I had to describe it in two words, it would undoubtedly be disappointment," the reporter noted on his laptop.

Robin on stage could sense the disappointment in the audience, but he remained unfazed and proceeded with the press conference according to the established procedure.

He bowed and said, "Wenxin Yiyan is now in closed beta testing. Everyone is welcome to apply."

In the future, it will integrate into the Baidu ecosystem and change our lives.

Led by Baidu employees, the audience erupted in applause.

Robin breathed a sigh of relief: Now we've taken this step, we're number one in China!

"I can't say we're fully ready to compare Wenxin Yiyan with ChatGPT, or even GPT-4, after all, that's a very high standard,"

"No other large technology company in the world has done this; we are the first,"

"Because of market demand, Baidu's various product lines, including search, autonomous driving, and Xiaodu, are all waiting to use this technology."

In the external market, customers and partners are also waiting, and everyone is urging us on.

That's why we had to release it now.

It's not perfect, but it's the first, the first domestically produced large-scale model, and we'll soon be able to provide it to our partners and consumers—that's the most important thing!

Robin made amends during an interview.

After everything was finished, Robin called the CFO in: "So, have you found all the analysts for America?"

"We've found the right people. We've hired leading analysts from Citibank and America Bank to test our 'Wenxin Yiyan' (a stock market analysis tool). They'll give it a positive review, and the stock price will return to its rightful place tomorrow," the CFO said decisively.

According to Baidu's script, this is called "first suppressing, then elevating".

However, Tencent has no intention of letting Baidu have its way. They have made up their minds to use the deep red to step on Baidu's Wenxin Yiyan and make Wenxin Yiyan a sacrifice.

"Are you ready?"

There was no press conference for Crimson; it was launched quietly.

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(End of this chapter)