I control the AI ​​empire thanks to the geniuses in my group.

My phone vibrated.

Su Zhou looked up from the sea of ​​questions and saw a message from Zhao Zixuan on the screen.

"Li Minghui's matter is settled. The notes and tutoring will be suspended for a while. I'll figure something out, so don't worry about it."

It was followed by a meme of someone gritting their teeth.

Su Zhou looked at the message and the corners of his mouth unconsciously curled up. Zhao Zixuan was usually carefree, but he was really reliable in critical moments. Putting everything else aside, his willingness to take responsibility for his brothers was enough to make him a friend for life.

He replied with two words: "Thanks."

After sending the message, Su Zhou remembered his mission.

The system notification for group number 42 has been posted in the group announcement section for several days.

Su Zhou needs a computer.

He pulled a metal box from his desk drawer. Inside was the money he had saved from selling his notes, plus the two hundred yuan he had previously saved, totaling six thousand and thirty yuan.

Su Zhou glanced at the old-fashioned computer in the corner.

A Celeron processor, 256MB of RAM, and a 40GB hard drive—it takes forever to open a webpage. Using it to train a neural network is like riding a bicycle on a highway.

Tomorrow is the weekend, and Su Zhou decided to go to the computer mall.

Early Saturday morning, after having breakfast, Su Zhou dragged the old computer out from under the table, put it in a cardboard box lined with foam, and carried it out the door.

In the living room, Su's mother was braiding Su Xing's hair. She glanced at him, didn't ask where he was going, and just told him to be careful when he went out.

After squeezing onto the bus, Su Zhou stood holding the cardboard box for forty minutes before getting off at the Keji Road stop.

The sun hadn't fully risen yet, but a large crowd had already gathered at the entrance of the computer mall.

Several salesmen in polo shirts were soliciting customers at the door, and their eyes lit up when they saw Su Zhou carrying a large suitcase. It was obvious he was there to exchange his phone for a new one.

"Hey bro! Want a custom-built PC? Dual-core! Cheap!"

Su Zhou ignored him and walked straight into the first floor.

He walked around the aisle a few times before finally stopping in front of a shop called Lao Zhou Digital.

The store wasn't big, but the shelves were neatly arranged, which made Su Zhou feel comfortable at first glance.

Behind the counter sat a man in his thirties, with a buzz cut, wearing a faded plaid shirt, looking down at an English magazine.

"Boss, do you take in old computers?"

The man looked up, his eyes behind his glasses glancing at Su Zhou, then at the cardboard box at his feet, before putting the magazine down.

"Bring it up for us to see."

Su Zhou carried the computer to the counter. The shopkeeper removed the side panel, glanced at it, tapped the motherboard a few times with his finger, and muttered, "Celeron... 256MB... 40GB Hitachi hard drive..."

He closed the side panel and leaned back in his chair: "This machine of yours is at least five or six years old, right? A Celeron with 256MB of RAM, that was just an entry-level configuration back then. The 40GB hard drive can still spin, but I know without even checking the SMART data that there are definitely a lot of bad sectors."

"How much can you give?"

"Five hundred and eighty," the shopkeeper said. "Don't think it's too little. I can't sell this configuration as a whole machine. I can only disassemble it and sell it secondhand. Nobody wants the Celeron CPU, the RAM is worth a little, and the hard drive is a matter of luck. Five hundred and eighty is a fair price."

Su Zhou remained silent.

Five hundred and eighty yuan is really not much.

Although his old computer was old, it was still a complete mainframe computer, and he expected it to cost a little over 800 yuan.

The shop owner noticed his hesitation but didn't rush him. He waved his hand and said, "If you think it's too low, you can ask other places. There are several recycling companies on the third floor. It's up to you whether you come back or not. My price remains the same."

"Then I'll go take a look." Su Zhou said, picking up the box and leaving decisively.

The shop owner was taken aback. Most people would hesitate or give in immediately when they heard "Go check out other places," but this kid actually left. He smiled, shook his head, and continued flipping through his magazine.

Su Zhou carried the box up to the third floor and asked three stores. The first store offered 520 yuan, but the second store didn't even want to look at it, saying they wouldn't accept Celeron machines.

The third person was enthusiastic, asking for 550 yuan, but the way their eyes darted around made Su Zhou distrust them.

Half an hour later, he returned to Lao Zhou Digital.

The boss saw him return but didn't even look up: "How was it?"

"Five hundred and eighty, I'll sell it."

"Okay." The shopkeeper put down the magazine, counted out 580 yuan from the drawer and handed it over. He then looked at Su Zhou and said, "You're quite an interesting kid. You actually went to compare prices. There aren't many young people these days who have this kind of thoughtfulness."

He paused, then continued, "If you buy a new machine from me, I'll give you a 300 discount, making your old machine worth 880. How about that?"

Su Zhou quickly calculated in his mind that he had 6,030 yuan in cash, plus 580 yuan in recycling fees, totaling 6,610 yuan. If he bought it here, he could save an extra 300 yuan, making his budget more flexible.

"Can."

The shopkeeper perked up and pulled a configuration list from under the counter: "Tell me, what are you going to use this for? Playing games? CS or World of Warcraft? Nine and a half out of ten young men your age are here to build a game console."

"I want to train a neural network."

The boss stopped writing.

He looked up, scrutinized Su Zhou closely, and chuckled, "Young man, where did you hear about neural networks?"

"I watched it myself."

"You read this yourself?" The shopkeeper put down his pen, crossed his arms on the counter, and seemed suddenly intrigued. "Then do you know how miserable life is for those people working on neural networks these days?"

Su Zhou frowned slightly.

The boss leaned back in his chair and started counting on his fingers: "Let me tell you, I like to browse foreign forums in my spare time, like Reddit. There was a really hot topic a couple of months ago, have you heard of the PicNet competition?"

Su Zhou shook his head.

"It's a large-scale image recognition competition. Simply put, it's about getting computers to recognize images. There are over five million images in a thousand categories. You have to get the program to automatically identify whether the image is a cat, a dog, or a car."

The boss became noticeably more enthusiastic when discussing the technical details: "We held the first one last year, and several top labs from Stanford and Princeton participated. And what was the result?"

He clicked his tongue: "The error rate is 98%. Out of 500 images, nearly 400 were misidentified. We couldn't even beat the team that does manual feature extraction. People say that neural network technology is hopeless."

"Foreigners aren't optimistic, and it goes without saying that domestically, it's even less likely. Go ask around in the labs at Tsinghua and Peking Universities—who would dare tell their advisor they want to research neural networks these days? The first thing they'd say is, 'Are you trying to extend your studies?'"

Su Zhou didn't speak, but he also didn't show any sign of backing down.

Seeing that he was unmoved, the boss tried a different approach: "I have an idea for you. If you're really interested in computer technology, go into information security."

"There's a severe shortage of people in the cybersecurity and penetration testing field right now. You can easily learn it in two years and earn over ten thousand a month. But if you're talking about neural networks, let me tell you the truth, there are probably fewer people in the entire world working on that than those working on cybersecurity."

"Those in cybersecurity are living the high life, while those working on neural networks can't even make ends meet!"

After listening, Su Zhou asked a question that the boss hadn't expected.

Are there prizes for achieving a good ranking in the PicNet competition?

The boss paused for a moment, then chuckled: "Prize money? No, this competition isn't some kind of commercial event; it's just something the academic community organizes."

"But if someone can actually get a decent ranking on PicNet, that's a different story. In the field of neural networks and artificial intelligence, you've made your debut, and everyone in the world who works in this field will know your name."

"If a Chinese person gets good results, that would be a great honor for the country." The boss laughed as he spoke, "But this is like buying a lottery ticket, the future is uncertain. Nobody knows what kind of future neural networks will bring. What if after five or ten years, it turns out this thing is really a dead end?"

"You're right, but I want to give it a try," Su Zhou said.

The boss stared at him for several seconds, then shook his head, picked up a pen, and started writing quickly on the configuration sheet.

"Alright, it's normal for young people to want to pursue their dreams, so I'll get you one."

As he wrote, he read aloud: "The CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 2.4GHz, dual-core, four-thread, currently the most cost-effective mid-range processor. For memory, two Kingston DDR2 800 sticks, one 1GB, for dual-channel, totaling 2GB. The motherboard is a Gigabyte 965P-DS3, stable and durable, capable of overclocking. The hard drive is a Seagate 250GB 7200RPM, enough for your datasets..."

After writing out the configuration, the boss added a line at the end and then handed the form over to Su Zhou to look at.

Su Zhou's gaze fell on the last line, which read: Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB

"This is……?"