Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 347 Never expected

Not all products need a product launch event.

Sometimes, climbing over others to get ahead is also a way.

Baidu's "Wenxin Yiyan" press conference was held in the afternoon. At 8 PM, Lin Ran posted a short video on his personal social media platform, which was only eight seconds long:

"I've developed an artificial intelligence called Crimson. Anyone interested can give it a try."

Pony, what do you think?

Compared to Robin's formal attire at the press conference, Lin Ran's outfit was very casual, and the entire video even highlighted a perfunctory attitude.

The camera shifted away from Lin Ran's face, and Pony appeared in the frame. He was also dressed casually, but with a big smile, giving a thumbs-up with both hands, and said, "I think it's great."

The camera then returns to Lin Ran, who says to the camera, "I hope everyone has fun."

Following this video, all official Tencent accounts began pushing the Crimson URL.

"Crimson, beyond your imagination."

The caption consisted of only seven words.

"Ran-ge's publicity is too rudimentary." Xu Xian was in the library, originally intending to read two of the latest popular PDE papers carefully! He had prepared his draft paper and pen, and put his phone on silent mode to avoid being disturbed.

Starting at 8 o'clock, the phone screen kept lighting up, and the WeChat icon kept appearing on the phone's lock screen without stopping.

Seohyun endured it for five minutes, but she couldn't take it anymore.

"Holy crap, this is a blatant slap in the face to Baidu!"

"Pony is so mean.JPG"

"Crimson is amazing! I think its intelligence level is even higher than the GPT I use."

"Yes, and it's not GPT-3, it's even more impressive than GPT-4, which OpenAI released a couple of days ago."

"Its responses in the Chinese-speaking domain are undoubtedly superior, especially its responses to texts related to literary creation, which are particularly outstanding. However, the quality of its responses in the English-speaking domain is no less than that of GPT-4."

"It's over, Baidu is finished. Robin said in an interview this afternoon that there is currently no company in the world that can catch up with OpenAI in the field of artificial intelligence, and then Tencent released DeepRed tonight. Isn't this a slap in the face?"

"The embarrassment is secondary; the most fatal impact is on Baidu's stock price."

"Where's Xu Shen? Why doesn't he say anything? Wasn't he the first to get the news?"

Then, in various groups, people would frequently tag Seohyun.

Seohyun couldn't resist picking up her phone, only to find out that it was Ran Ge's AI that had been released.

"Crimson? This timing is too deliberate. They're trying to crush Baidu and Robin to rise to the top," Xu Xian thought to himself.

He couldn't sit still any longer, so he packed his bag and went back to his dorm.

When he returned to his dorm room, he found his roommate Li Yiqing already sitting at his desk, with the same crimson screen on his laptop that he had seen on Weibo.

The simple black and red color scheme makes it hard to believe that this is a generative artificial intelligence interface; it looks more like a mecha control interface.

"Qing-ge, how is it?" Xu Xian asked.

Li Yiqing pointed and said, "Look, see for yourself."

Seohyun leaned closer to the screen, glanced at it, and exclaimed, "Holy crap! This is so professional?"

Li Yiqing's questions were very much in his style.

"If I want to study applied mathematics in the future, delve into the knowledge in this direction, and engage in theoretical research in this field, and I am currently an undergraduate student majoring in mathematics, please help me plan my study path."

This is his question, and Crimson's answer includes the learning content, timeline, goals for each stage, recommended textbooks, self-study courses from MIT OCW, YouTube, and Coursera, how to practice, how to get started, and so on.

It is very comprehensive and complete.

"From my perspective as a PhD student in applied mathematics who is about to graduate, there is absolutely no problem with this answer. In fact, I myself could not have given such a comprehensive answer."

He would even suggest joining interest-based communities like Mathoverflow and Reddit r/math, and how to adjust what you learn based on your interests and strengths, and at what stage to choose a direction.

In my opinion, the only drawback is the number of recommended books. There are too many recommendations, and they are all in English, such as "Introduction to Applied Mathematics" and "X and the City: Modeling Aspects of Urban Life".

First, it would be quite difficult for undergraduates to understand applied mathematics books written entirely in English. Second, it's just a suggestion, but if you actually take it, you'll have to spend a lot of time studying these books before you know whether they're good or not, or whether they're suitable for you.

I only managed to find these problems because I'm nitpicking.

Otherwise, it would be almost perfect.

Unlike other users who focus on the quality of poems or the fluency of articles produced by artificial intelligence, Li Yiqing pays more attention to practical applications.

After he finished rambling on, Li Yiqing concluded: "In my opinion, Crimson is easier to use than GPT. It has a higher level of intelligence, not in the true sense, but in the sense of intelligence it displays."

It integrates more complete information and provides answers to questions that are more in line with human thinking.

This is absolutely incredible.

There are two possibilities: one is that Burning God had been investing in research in this direction for a long time, and this is the result of their accumulation; the other is that they really did surpass GPT in just two months.

Either way, it's amazing.

Xu Xian said, "No matter which one it is, I only know one thing, and that is that Baidu is finished."

If this had been made by a small company, Baidu might have been able to survive by relying on its own competitive advantage, but this is the product of a collaboration between Ran Ge and Tencent.

With Tencent's traffic and promotional capabilities, Baidu's market share will be rapidly swallowed up.

Wenxin's words were not a clarion call for their comeback, but rather a death knell for their demise.

To put it simply, anyone who knows about Baidu's questionable practices will have no good feelings towards it.

Under the auction model, Putian-affiliated hospitals and P2P companies are heavily advertised. As long as you pay, the advertising website can squeeze out the original search results.

There is absolutely no social responsibility involved.

Netizens' dislike for Baidu is not a recent phenomenon; it seems like this resentment will never end.

This is why, despite Robin having no flaws in his personal image, resume, or private life, his reputation on the Simplified Chinese internet is terrible.

Some people drag their companies down with them, like Li Bin and Li Xiang in the Wei Xiaoli case. These two founders made careless remarks that dragged their companies down, making people dislike the companies as a result. Lei Jun, on the other hand, used his personal image to bring Xiaomi to success. Robin is a rare case, where his personal image was dragged down by the company's image.

After hearing this, Li Yiqing said, "This is a good thing! If Baidu goes bankrupt, I'll definitely have a big feast."

Xu Xian added, "I have to set off fireworks to celebrate!" He then sat down at his computer, turned it on, entered the website, registered, and started asking questions. His questions were similar to Li Yiqing's; Li Yiqing asked about applied mathematics, while he asked about partial differential equations.

"As an undergraduate mathematics student, you may already have some basic knowledge, but learning PDE requires solid prerequisite knowledge."

These are typical prerequisites for the PDE course. Ensure you understand the analytical tools and methods used in PDE. If any are missing, it is recommended to complete them first:

1. Calculus Sequence: Single-variable and multi-variable calculus (including vector analysis, Green's theorem, and Stokes' theorem), which are the core of integration and differentiation operations in PDE.

2. Linear Algebra: Matrices, vector spaces, eigenvalues, etc. PDEs often involve linear operators.

3. Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs): Solution methods for first-order and second-order ODEs, such as separation of variables and integrating factors. Introductions to PDEs often begin with ODEs.

4. Fundamentals of Fourier Analysis: Fourier series and transforms are key tools for solving many linear PDEs (such as the heat equation and wave equation).

The answer was very complete, and what shocked Xu Xian even more was, "Holy crap, Qing-ge, how come this even includes preparations for applying for a master's or doctoral degree?"
It suggested that I find a professor to do a research project in the field of numerical analysis during the later stages of my undergraduate studies. The target school could be the University of Minnesota, which has an active PDE research program. I should also prepare for the GRE Mathematics Subject Test, emphasizing PDE-related courses.

"Damn, I didn't see that in your answer."

Li Yiqing leaned over for a look. "Yes, this is much more intelligent. It even knows that you need to study abroad to do math research, and that a domestic PhD isn't worth much in China. But the question is, why not apply it to applied mathematics?"

After a moment, Li Yiqing said, "It's probably because its training database has more complete answers about PDE, so the answers it integrates are more intelligent."

Crimson is both literary and intellectually stimulating, capable of astonishing general readers and intellectuals like Li Yiqing and Xu Xian on professional issues. Undoubtedly, Crimson's influence spread rapidly after its release.

Originally, Chinese netizens were still immersed in the disappointment of Baidu's Wenxin Yiyan in the afternoon. Wenxin Yiyan not only did not have an actual demonstration, but only a pre-recorded video, and the performance was also very poor.

It does not demonstrate any advantage over search engines.

At eight o'clock in the evening, Crimson gave them a big surprise.

This is like a nuclear bomb, a nuclear bomb dropped on the Simplified Chinese internet.

At this point, if you open any group, whether it's a WeChat group or a QQ group, they'll all be discussing Crimson.

At 2:02 PM, Crimson's official Weibo account posted a celebratory poster:

"58 points, registered users surpass 100 million!"

The poster was red with black lettering, and the overall design matched the deep red name perfectly, resulting in a rapid increase in likes.

Netizens also left comments below.

That evening, when the US stock market opened, Baidu's stock price plummeted instantly. Even though senior analysts from America Bank and Citibank came out to support him, saying that Wenxin Yiyan was very useful and far exceeded expectations, his competitors only took an hour to achieve a breakthrough from zero to one million.

Moreover, no one in the capital market is optimistic that Baidu can win a head-on competition with Tencent. The person in charge of Tencent's artificial intelligence is still Lin Ran, a man nicknamed "mad scientist" on the outside world.

The stock opened sharply lower by 14 percentage points, and the decline widened to 23 percentage points during the day before recovering slightly to 19 percentage points by the close.

"Baidu is really too ruthless. Before the market opened today, it had a market value of 44 billion yuan, but by the close of trading today, it only had about 356 billion yuan left. It lost nearly 10 billion US dollars in market value in one day."

That's terrifying! An eight-second video is all it takes to launch a product launch, and they've already registered a million users in just one hour. And this isn't an app; Crimson only has a website right now and hasn't even done any mobile adaptation yet.

This means that more than 100 million users registered and used the service by opening a webpage on a computer.

That's really brutal.

Pony must be laughing his head off. He crushed Baidu with minimal effort. Given the capabilities shown by Crimson, Baidu's search engine will be reduced to a market share similar to Bing's within six months at most.

This isn't the most critical issue. The most critical issue is that Tencent acquired Sogou in 2020—a full acquisition of Sogou. Sogou has always had a search engine business. If Tencent were to empower Sogou with its deep red technology...

Alternatively, they could relaunch a new AI-based deep red search engine and merge Sogou into it.

It's hard to say whether Baidu can maintain the same status as Bing.

It wiped out nearly $10 billion of Baidu's market value in just eight seconds.

Truly, living in this era, we witness miracles every day.

"Also, let me add something. Robin said that Chinese tech companies are at least two years behind GPT. I suggest that with your level of understanding, you should honestly bring Lu Qi back. With your current understanding, how can you possibly win this AI battle?" — A popular Douyin influencer's late-night reflection.

It wasn't just Baidu that suffered a sharp drop that day; all non-Tencent-affiliated Chinese internet companies listed in America fell.

Tencent's deep red color, and the significance behind it, is a major negative for all these companies.

On the other hand, the market value of companies like Google, Meta, and Apple also declined slightly, as Tencent has business overseas as well.

Only Nvidia saw another surge.

After all, no matter how much people dig for gold, those who sell shovels always make a profit.

Nilanjan has been in a prison in New York City, built in the 18th century, for over a year.

In the beginning, FBI Specialist Smith kept coming to question him, trying to force him to tell him exactly how he assisted China in completing the Apollo moon landing.

What was the key role he played in it?

They also implied that they would release him if he handed over key technical information.

The problem is, Nilanjan himself knows that he really didn't get involved in this matter. He said he helped, but does granting him leave count as helping?

He also wanted to provide technical information, since America's moon landing was a source of pride for India.

But he really couldn't come up with it.

Later, the questioning gradually decreased to once a week, then to once a month, and then every six months.

It has been a full six months now, and apart from prison staff, no Commissioner Smith has come to question him.

He was like someone forgotten in a corner of the empire, with no one to turn to for help.

Niranjan's experience also serves as a reminder to many Indian professors: never recruit Chinese students just because they are useful.

In the past year or so, it has become much more difficult for Chinese students to apply for American PhD programs, and this is one of the reasons.

That day, as usual, Nilanjan got up and pondered how he could possibly leave this damned place.

Then two figures appeared at the door. One was Commissioner Smith, and the other was someone he knew very well, someone he often saw on social media: Zuckerberg.

“Professor Balasubramaniam, congratulations, you have been released on bail. You are not allowed to leave New York during your bail period. Mr. Zuckerberg bailed you out,” Commissioner Smith said.

Nilan Zhan was practically glowing. "Holy crap, I can finally get out!" His eyes were brimming with tears. He thought to himself, "I never imagined that it would be Zuckerberg who saved me."

　I really didn't pad the modern storyline. If I wanted to, I could easily write 10,000 words for a press conference, and I only used a few hundred words to describe the development process, skipping over the subsequent impact as much as possible. I've been keeping the story moving forward.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)