I can become stronger by paying salaries. I have one billion employees!

Chapter 222 AI Super God: In front of the boss, I'm like a greenhorn!
February 12th, the day before the start of the semester at the Virtual College.

Students dragging their suitcases walked along Xuelin Road. The early spring wind rustled the sycamore leaves. The early cherry blossoms by Pearl Lake were dense and compact, resembling a pink cloud when viewed from afar.

A silver Bentley slowly drove from the direction of the faculty apartments, passing the stadium and library, and finally heading towards the east gate.

"It looks like senior Chen Yansen!"

"Remove 'seems like'! The only people in our school who can drive their private cars in are the principal, the dean, and him."

"By the way, I heard that Orange Technology is recruiting voice data labelers, with an hourly wage of ten yuan. Unfortunately, my Mandarin proficiency only passed Level 2B, which doesn't meet the Level 2A requirement."

"Are there many openings? I have a Level 1B Mandarin Proficiency Certificate and would like to give it a try."

"Brother, who said you have to have a Level 2A Mandarin score? As long as you have strong dialect dictation skills, you can get the job."

Five or six students watched the Bentley drive away and started chattering amongst themselves.

At this moment, a freshman came over and asked curiously, "Excuse me, senior, where do I register? I'd also like to find a part-time job."

"Orange Technology's official website. You need to fill in your virtual college student ID number in your user profile before you can see the registration section," one of them replied.

"Thank you, senior." The freshman thanked him repeatedly.

Before Chen Yansen came to the School of Virtual Studies, most students in the School of Virtual Studies could only work part-time as librarians or cafeteria cleaners. The wages were low and the competition was extremely fierce.

Often, all the positions are snapped up within the first week of new student registration.

The remaining people can only work as internet cafe managers, deliver clothes to laundromats, or hand out flyers in the city. Their daily wage is usually only 30-40 yuan, and they have to work themselves to the bone.

But since Orange Technology and Pinbei came along, college students who want to earn some living expenses can at least find a part-time job as online customer service representatives. They can sit in an office with air conditioning, and receive free fruit, snacks, and tea every day, easily earning 100 yuan.

That's why Chen Yansen's life at the school was quite peaceful.

Firstly, many people want to work at Orange Technology or Pinbei Mall after graduation, and Chen Yansen is their future boss, so no one dares to bother them casually; secondly, everyone often bumps into him on campus, and after seeing him so often, the novelty wears off.

the other side.

Chen Yansen arrived at Zhuxianzhuang Science and Technology Park, parked his car, and stepped into Building No. 9.

"Good morning, boss!" the tall, youthful, and beautiful receptionist greeted sweetly.

Chen Yansen nodded slightly and walked towards the elevator.

"Good morning, boss!" Zhou Chuangxi was standing in the elevator and was about to press the close button when he saw the big boss walking towards him. He quickly pressed the open button instead.

"Good morning, Lao Zhou! By the way, has iFlytek's voice database been synchronized yet?"

Chen Yansen responded and casually asked.

Before the language analysis system is officially launched, it must collect a large amount of speech data and combine it with deep learning algorithms through precise manual annotation in order to develop more advanced acoustic and language models.

This will further improve the accuracy of speech recognition in Yuxi!
Generally speaking, there are four ways to obtain voice data: first, user-authorized collection; second, professional recording collection, mainly through a paid model.
Third, the voice data is free and publicly available, covering multiple languages, dialects, and different voice scenarios; fourth, data sharing.

Chen Yansen chose the fourth cooperation method. With Tao Jingwen's help, Orange Technology and iFlytek established a cooperation, and the data generated by Orange mobile phone users using the voice function will be shared by both parties.

Orange Technology saved a lot of money and time, while iFlytek was able to take the opportunity to enrich its own voice database.

"Boss, it's all done, but about 30% of the voice data hasn't been manually labeled yet, so it can only be considered raw data."

Zhou Chuangxi chuckled dryly and quickly replied.

Having only been with the company for two weeks, he had already gotten used to Chen Yansen's way of addressing him.

As a top student in the Huazhong University of Science and Technology's gifted youth program and a PhD in electrical engineering from UIUC, he is primarily proficient in computer vision, image processing, and speech recognition technologies.

In his opinion, Chen Yan calling him Lao Zhou made him feel more intimate.

The two had only chatted briefly for half an hour via video interview before Zhou Chuangxi made up his mind to return to China and join Orange Technology to create an AI voice model software.

"The HR department is helping you recruit data labelers, and Daniel Povey from Microsoft will also be joining next week. Orange Technology's AI lab will be in your hands. We hope to see the product launched soon."

Chen Yansen patted Zhou Chuangxi on the shoulder and gave him some instructions.

The two were twenty and thirty-one years old, but Zhou Chuangxi, a PhD in Electrical Engineering from UIUC, acted like a humble student in front of Chen Yansen.

The core reason is that Chen Yansen offered too much: a monthly salary of 10 yuan plus 10 stock options in Orange Technology, to be received over four years. If he achieved results in the middle, there would be additional equity rewards, which would amount to an annual salary of over 400 million yuan.

On the other hand, when he learned that the entire framework of the language analysis system had been independently written by Chen Yansen, he was immediately shocked. After reviewing the code, he developed a deep admiration for his new boss.

He knew in his heart that with Chen Yansen's computer programming skills, even in the United States, he would become a super master in the field of AI speech recognition.

Therefore, under the guise of working, Zhou Chuangxi would take the time to discuss the optimization direction of the speech model with Chen Yansen.

This period of time reminded him of his experience studying at UIUC.

"Daniel Povey?" Zhou Chuangxi asked instinctively after hearing his new colleague's name.

"You know him?" Chen Yansen asked in surprise.

At that time, Daniel was not well-known in the field of AI. The Kaldi speech recognition tool he was in charge of developing was still in its early stages, and his most prestigious title was just a senior engineer at Microsoft Research.

“He gave a public lecture at UIUC, and I was very impressed with him. He is very accomplished in speech recognition technology.”

Zhou Chuangxi praised without reservation. "That's right, it really is him!" Chen Yansen said with a smile.

"Boss, isn't he a professor at Johns Hopkins University?" Zhou Chuangxi asked, puzzled.

“I told him that Orange Technology’s AI lab will build a computing cluster with petabyte-level storage and 600 GPUs, which will have a total computing power of 15 PetaFLOPS.”

Chen Yansen shrugged and truthfully stated the main reason why Daniel was willing to join Orange Technology.

15 PetaFLOPS means that it can perform 1.5 quadrillion floating-point operations per second.

Of course, he also possessed an extraordinary mental strength akin to that of a 'succubus,' managing to win over a top-tier R&D engineer in the future AI industry with just a few words over the phone.

Seven years later, Facebook offered him the position of chief scientist and a million-dollar annual salary, which he rejected outright.

Chen Yansen offered Daniel a monthly salary of only $2.2, and Daniel readily agreed.

A server with 15 PetaFLOPS of computing power is simply too tempting!
It's worth noting that at that time, Johns Hopkins University's speech processing center only had a total computing power of 0.5 PetaFLOPS.

"Boss, are you serious?" Zhou Chuangxi swallowed hard, confirming incredulously.

"What's the difference between real and fake? I had someone calculate it, and the cost is only 3 million."

Chen Yansen smiled and shook his head, not taking it to heart.

With a "ding," the elevator doors slowly opened!

Zhou Chuangxi hurriedly caught up: "Boss, this is 15 PetaFLOPS of computing power. The Titan supercomputer in the United States only has 17.6 PetaFLOPS."

Chen Yansen smiled faintly.

He sighed inwardly, marveling at the rapid pace of computer computing power iteration.

Thirteen years later, NVIDIA launched an AI supercomputer called Project DIGITS, which can provide 1 PetaFLOPS of floating-point operations per second and is priced at only 21999 yuan.

In 2012, building a computer server with equivalent computing power would have cost nearly 3000 million yuan just for the hardware alone, not including electricity and maintenance costs.

Zhou Chuangxi's eyes widened and his mouth slightly agape. He finally understood why Daniel, this Englishman, was willing to come to China.

A server with only 15 PetaFLOPS of computing power can attract a large number of computer science PhDs from Ivy League universities and prestigious universities like Tsinghua and Peking University.

There are actually quite a few laboratories with supercomputing power in the United States, but given Zhou Chuangxi and Daniel's industry influence, even if they got in, they would at most be stepping stones for others. It's not as comfortable as joining Orange Technology and being in charge of a project.

"Old Zhou, the hardware needed to set up the computing server will arrive this week. You can decide on the location of the data center. Also, China Telecom has set up a 4G experience point in the science park, so don't worry about network issues."

Before entering the office, Chen Yansen added one more sentence.

"Okay, boss, I'll go back to work now." Zhou Chuangxi smiled and walked happily towards his workstation.

As they walked, they were amazed by Chen Yansen's influence in the local area.

After all, this was 2012, and the three major telecom operators hadn't even obtained 4G licenses yet, so Orange Technology was able to enjoy 4G networks ahead of time.

Chen Yansen pushed open the door and plopped down in a soft chair, then casually turned on his computer.

Compared to Sweden, Norway, Korea, and the United States, China's 4G network is still in the exploratory and construction stage in the commercial field.

He first checked the current business status of Pinbei, Orange Technology, Kuaipao, and Yunsu, and only after finding no problems did he leisurely browse the news.

On February 11th, the nation's first 4G experience center opened to Hangzhou residents, with average download speeds reaching 30 Mbps...

Chen Yansen scoffed, "China's first 4G site is clearly in Zhuxianzhuang Science and Technology Park."

But this thing was specially approved for him by Xu Zhenhui and Zhao Maolin, so it can be used but not mentioned.

"Vipshop submitted its IPO application to the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States yesterday, with an estimated goal of raising $1.25 million."

"The battle for the top 1,000 group-buying platforms is fierce! Lashou, Nuomi, and Meituan are locked in a three-way competition, while Dianping, Wowo, and QQ Group are close behind!"

Walmart announced it has increased its stake in Yihaodian to 51%, officially taking control of the company!

"Ma Liyun and Wang Jianlin made a 1 million yuan bet: can e-commerce account for 50% of the retail market?"

"The food delivery war has begun! Ele.me is no match for the newcomer, and only 60% of the Shanghai market share remains!"

Chen Yansen glanced at it casually and felt that the internet environment in 2012 was far more favorable than it would be more than a decade later.

A bunch of vertical e-commerce websites that he'd never even heard of could easily raise tens of millions in funding.

This is truly an era of entrepreneurial euphoria!

As long as you dare to dream and can boast about it, venture capitalists are really willing to spend money!

Just like Zhang Yiming's ByteDance, which was still in its infancy, it secured 500 million yuan in funding based on a single PPT presentation.

at the same time.

Ali is busy upgrading its B2C business and continuously expanding its payment scenarios using Zhifubao;
Baidu is busy optimizing its search engine algorithm and has begun to try adding recommendations for nearby businesses, restaurants and entertainment venues to Baidu Maps to drive traffic to group-buying websites and earn advertising fees and commissions.
Tencent is busy ramping up its WeChat promotion efforts, engaging in a love-hate relationship with its own QQ, while simultaneously announcing that its total user base has surpassed 100 million!
Chen Yansen quietly recruited two top AI experts from the United States to begin developing a large-scale voice model.

(End of this chapter)