Chapter 283 - 218: Self-Study is Useful After All

Chapter 283: Chapter 218: Self-Study is Useful After All

In the less than a month that Chen Lin spent devising the new neural network framework, Bai Qian hadn’t been idle either. He had designed a very thorough process for implementing and verifying the algorithm framework.

Now that Chen Lin’s algorithm framework was ready, Bai Qian and Chen Lin followed the designed process step by step.

In the following days, Chen Lin had Bai Qian temporarily move his workstation next to his for pair programming.

They were like two friends teaming up to build with LEGO bricks, except the bricks in their hands were PyTorch.

Since it was a brand-new architecture, it meant that all the existing, pre-packaged high-level APIs on the market, like Hugging Face’s Transformers library, were basically useless.

Want to cut corners? No way.

Everything had to be coded from scratch, starting with the most fundamental modules like `torch.nn` and `torch.linear`, and built up line by line.

CLICK-CLACK-CLICK-CLACK-CLICK—

Bai Qian’s fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard, the keystrokes sounding like dense raindrops.

"President Chen, are you sure the backpropagation gradient for this adaptive weight distribution function doesn’t need clipping? If we don’t add it, I’m worried the gradient will explode during the initial training phase."

Bai Qian, sporting a bird’s nest of hair, turned to look at Chen Lin. His eyes were bloodshot, but he was alarmingly wired.

Chen Lin sat across from him, his own screen also filled with scrolling lines of code.

Although his programming prowess couldn’t compare to a formally-trained "code maniac" like Bai Qian, let alone a seasoned veteran like Pan Si who had honed his skills for years at a major company, he had one unbeatable advantage: he was just too damn familiar with this algorithm!

It was like the difference between a master bricklayer and the architect who drew the blueprints.

The bricklayer’s wall-building technique might be incredible, but the architect knows where every single brick should go with his eyes closed.

"No need for clipping." Chen Lin didn’t even turn his head as his fingers typed the last line of code. "I’ve already included an implicit gradient constraint in the information entropy regularization term. Just run it. It won’t explode."

Hearing this, Bai Qian froze for a moment, then quickly ran through Chen Lin’s mathematical derivation in his head.

A few seconds later, he suddenly slapped his thigh.

"Holy shit! You’re right!"

"President Chen, how the hell does your brain work? How can you directly map a mathematical trick like that into code logic?"

Bai Qian stared at Chen Lin as if he were looking at a monster.

Chen Lin smiled, picking up his coffee for a sip. "Don’t look at me like that. You’ll make me arrogant."

Although he sounded casual, Chen Lin was well aware that without those six months of intense self-study, relying solely on the mathematical formulas provided by Little Mathematician, he probably wouldn’t even have been able to make sense of the PyTorch documentation yet.

This just went to show the importance of a solid knowledge base.

Amidst this high-intensity work of coding from scratch, the prototype of the new architecture was rapidly taking shape.

...

After finishing a day of building the code, Chen Lin glanced at the time.

1:30 PM.

There was still half an hour before his and Bai Qian’s scheduled afternoon "mathematical derivation session."

Chen Lin leaned back in his chair, rubbing his slightly sore wrists.

’Although the mathematical derivation for the new architecture is complete, Little Mathematician still has a daily usage quota of 2 hours and 40 minutes.’

’I had been thinking about contacting Academician Liang again to see if the country had any other thorny projects that needed help. After all, I’m now a distinguished talent in the "Ten Thousand Talents Plan," and it’s my duty to serve the nation.’

But then, he suddenly remembered an email he had seen a few days ago.

It was from Professor Tang Xuebing of the Science and Technology University’s materials department.

It said that the joint research group from Yannan and the Science and Technology University had encountered a new problem in chemical materials science during their solid-state battery research, and they wanted to ask Chen Lin to step in once more.

Chen Lin recalled that Academician Liang’s disciple, Professor Gongtan from the Science and Technology University’s math department, had mentioned to him once that the solid-state battery project was highly valued by the higher-ups, considered a strategic high ground in the new energy sector.

Besides, Professor Tang’s tone in the email had sounded quite urgent.

’Alright, I’ll help the joint task force solve this problem first.’

Having made up his mind, Chen Lin took out his phone and opened WeChat.

He scrolled through his list for a while before finding the group chat—the one he had long since set to "Do Not Disturb"—tucked away in an inconspicuous corner.

The "New Energy Joint Research Project Group."

The red number in the top-right corner had long since turned to "99+".

Ever since Chen Lin had helped them solve that fractal geometry problem, the group had been in a state of extreme excitement.

The professors and doctoral students in the group passionately discussed all sorts of technical details every day.

Chen Lin usually found it noisy and barely ever looked at it.

He clicked into the group chat, typed directly into the input box, and tagged Tang Xuebing.

Chen Lin: @Professor Tang Xuebing, I’ve finished the tasks I had on hand. Does the problem you mentioned in your email to Yanhai still require a solution?

The moment the message was sent, the group chat, which had been discussing "electrolyte interface impedance," went silent for about two seconds.

Then, it was as if a depth charge had been dropped into a fish pond.

It exploded.

Holy shit! Chen Shen surfaced!

Is that Professor Chen?! Hello, sir!

Professor Chen, hello! I’m Liu from Yannan’s School of Chemistry. I’ve heard so much about you!

Great God Chen, I’m a huge fan! I’ve read both of your papers!

In an instant, the screen was flooded with all kinds of greetings and fawning messages.

You have to understand, Chen Lin’s current status in the academic world was skyrocketing.

Two consecutive top-tier papers in JAMS, endorsements from six Fields Medal laureates, solving the AI hallucination problem, triggering a US stock market circuit breaker...

Each and every one of these was a major event that shook the academic world.

Although the people in this group were all elites in their respective fields, in front of the current Chen Lin, they all had to respectfully call him "big shot."

Chen Lin’s mouth twitched as he looked at the chaotic mess of messages, and he chose to simply ignore them.

Fortunately, Professor Tang Xuebing was, after all, a man who had seen it all, and his reaction was extremely fast.

Less than ten seconds after Chen Lin sent his message, Tang Xuebing’s reply arrived.

Tang Xuebing: Oh! Professor Chen! You finally have time! This is wonderful!

Tang Xuebing: We’re still stuck on that problem! We’ve spent the last half-month trying all sorts of methods, we’ve been tearing our hair out over it, just waiting for you to save us!

Tang Xuebing: When would be convenient for you? I can personally come to Yannan University to meet with you! Day or night, I’m available!

Even through the screen, Chen Lin could feel Professor Tang’s urgent and excited mood.

Chen Lin thought for a moment and replied:

Chen Lin: How about this Thursday, December 11th, at 2 PM? Same place, Yannan University’s School of Chemistry. How does that sound?

Tang Xuebing: No problem! I’ll book my ticket to Jinmen right now!