Algorithm system

Lin Yuan was scared awaySome coincidences in this world seem like coincidences, yet they are full of inevitability.

Ever since Xia Ye started working at the Nine Minutes Sweet Milk Tea Shop in the evenings, the rumor of “a beautiful senior from the dance department selling milk tea” spread like wildfire.

In the era of mobile internet, any information with a bit of a gimmick cannot be hidden. As a result, the Nine Minutes Sweet Milk Tea Shop experienced continuous order surges every evening, with long queues forming on-site.

In the IT industry, one thing that must be considered is “extreme conditions.”

The extreme condition in Lin Yuan’s small test area outside the school was precisely the Nine Minutes Sweet Milk Tea Shop where Xia Ye worked.

Twice, when Lin Yuan reviewed the algorithm the next day, he found that the factor causing slow delivery came from a certain milk tea shop that experienced a sudden surge in orders at a specific time.

This milk tea shop’s order volume would skyrocket around 7 PM every evening. But damn it, Lin Yuan’s algorithm was still a beta version, just a small sapling, yet it was continuously tormented by such abnormal situations.

What AI models fear most during training are those outlier data points. It’s like if everyone else is around 1.7 meters tall, and then you, a good fellow, are over 2 meters tall, the AI would easily get confused when it sees you.

This is very counter-intuitive; in reality, AI has no intelligence.

That’s right, AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. In fact, AI doesn’t have human-like intelligence at all. So-called artificial intelligence is more described from the path of the Turing Test, based on the effects AI can achieve.

For example: if you ask an AI to define what a human is. If the data you feed the AI consists of a group of people around 1.7 meters tall, and then suddenly you bring in someone over 2 meters tall, the AI might very well think: this guy isn’t human.

Because AI would habitually interpret being around 1.7 meters tall as one of the indicators for determining whether something is human.

In contrast, Lin Yuan’s algorithm. This was a beta version, a small sapling of an algorithm. It would be strange if it wasn’t confused by the Nine Minutes Sweet Milk Tea Shop, which experienced a surge in orders precisely at 7 PM every night. Because, damn it, Lin Yuan had never fed his computing system data that included such a situation.

For AI, “if I haven’t seen it, don’t expect me to understand it.”

So, whenever the simulated delivery involved this Nine Minutes Sweet Milk Tea Shop, the algorithm would produce all sorts of strange anomalies.

Lin Yuan tried to fix it twice, but it still had no effect, so he got angry. He decided to personally visit this Nine Minutes Sweet Milk Tea Shop to find out what the hell was going on.

—

It was about 7:20 PM when Lin Yuan arrived at the Nine Minutes Sweet Milk Tea Shop on his small electric scooter. He had actually been there once half an hour earlier; back then, there were only a few scattered customers at the entrance, but this time, good heavens, the queue stretched for three lines.

And what was strange was that even though there were two ordering counters, those three lines always seemed to crowd towards just one of them.

With the goal of enhancing the robustness of the algorithm, Lin Yuan naturally wanted the algorithm to be able to handle such special situations. To handle such special situations, he needed to first understand the cause of this situation.

Lin Yuan glanced at the length of the queue and quickly abandoned the idea of waiting in line. He immediately impersonated a delivery rider, shouting, “Excuse me, excuse me, picking up a delivery.”

He wanted to use the excuse of picking up a delivery to squeeze to the front and see what exactly was going on at this milk tea shop.

After squeezing past several shoulders in the crowd, Lin Yuan saw the ordering counter.

“Student, what would you like to drink?”

“I’m picking up a delivery,” Lin Yuan said, his gaze probing inside, trying to find the answer he sought.

“Deliveries are over there…” The girl taking orders pointed to the shelf where deliveries were placed, and then her hand froze in mid-air.

“You… you…” Xia Ye had fantasized many times that he would come to her to pick up a delivery. Therefore, whenever someone came to pick up an order, as long as it was a young man, she would pay attention to his build and appearance.

Finally, in today’s crowded throng, he really came.

At this moment, Xia Ye completely ignored the customers waiting in line to order. Her mind was filled only with the BGM: “You are my destiny…”

Lin Yuan followed the girl’s direction and walked to the delivery shelf. His mind was completely caught up in the struggle of not finding an answer, as if he was solving a very difficult math problem.

‘I can’t see anything unusual about this shop. I can understand a milk tea shop having a surge in orders, but what’s the deal with it surging precisely at 7 PM?’

After more than ten seconds, the waiting crowd finally grew impatient. But these people in line were clearly not just there for milk tea. So, someone finally spoke up to remind, “Senior, senior… I want to order. I came specifically for you. Can I take a photo with you later?”

“Those in front, stop dawdling, hurry up!” The people at the back of the line were even more agitated.

Lin Yuan was disturbed by the commotion of the crowd. Since he was pretending to be a delivery rider picking up an order, it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to stay there much longer.

Since he couldn’t find an answer immediately, Lin Yuan pretended to casually rummage through the delivery shelf, “It seems I made a mistake. The order I need to pick up isn’t here.”

Lin Yuan made up a random excuse so that his behavior wouldn’t seem too strange. But in reality, everyone’s attention wasn’t on him at all.

“Senior, I want to order. Senior…”

Lin Yuan paid no attention, his mind still grappling with where the problem lay.

“Wait, you wait…”

Lin Yuan was suddenly pulled from behind, and he was immediately startled. Although he was pretending to be a delivery rider just now, he hadn’t taken any orders randomly.

Lin Yuan immediately turned around, raising his hands, “I really made a mistake just now, I didn’t take anything.”

“Do you… do you still remember me?”

The girl who had been looking down at the ordering counter had now chased him out and was standing right in front of Lin Yuan.

Lin Yuan looked at her suspiciously.

“Oh my goodness.” Lin Yuan quickly recognized her. “How is it you?”

Lin Yuan hadn’t expected to encounter the same girl he met at the maid cafe last time. ‘She’s quite versatile, she’s even running a milk tea shop now.’

“Is there something I can help you with?” Lin Yuan asked politely. His heart was not stirred by her beauty, because his thoughts about the person in front of him had been completely deleted after last time, the kind of delete that empties the recycle bin.

“You, you gave me a thousand yuan last time. This time… you return the thousand yuan to me.”

“Nani?” Lin Yuan was so shocked that his language changed. ‘Damn it, I gave you a thousand yuan for free last time, and now as soon as we meet, you want another thousand from me? It seems the old saying is true, girls from places like that are the most greedy and vain.’

Lin Yuan looked at the scene as if he had gotten something for free last time without paying. This was unacceptable; he was a graduate student at Zijin Aviation School, and getting involved with such a girl would ruin his reputation. She wouldn’t cause trouble at the school, would she? It would be hard enough just to explain.

He had just been bailed out of the police station by his mentor, and now was he going to be labeled as having an improper lifestyle?

Lin Yuan no longer cared about algorithms or anything else; getting away was the priority. He immediately sprinted towards his small electric scooter.

And Xia Ye? When she first saw Lin Yuan, she was actually very flustered. She tried to explain to him that she no longer worked at that kind of place. Clarifying this was very important to her.

In fact, Xia Ye wasn’t clichély smitten with Lin Yuan or anything like that; it was because Lin Yuan made her confront her inner self. She needed to explain clearly to Lin Yuan, as if she was giving herself an account.

Xia Ye herself felt that it was wrong for a good girl to work as a maid to earn money, but Lin Yuan had seen her as a maid. She needed to explain clearly to Lin Yuan that she was not the person he saw.

If it were anyone else who saw her as a maid, it wouldn’t matter, but Lin Yuan was different. Because of Lin Yuan’s selfless gift to Xia Ye last time, and the words she considered encouraging, he had inadvertently become Xia Ye’s spiritual mentor.

And explaining her character clearly to a mentor was naturally a very important matter.

But precisely because this matter was important, in her excitement, Xia Ye inverted the subject and object of “I’ll return the thousand yuan to you,” turning it into “You return the thousand yuan to me.”