Algorithm system

I have to pretend to be like thisLin Yuan woke up the next day after his alarm rang at eight and checked his emails.

Sure enough, the other party’s email had arrived before seven.

“Lin Student, we fully sense your passion for the AI field. We also appreciate your research spirit. Please add our WeChat for further contact. We hope we can work together for the equality and freedom of humanity.”

“Ugh… Good thing I haven’t had breakfast yet!”

Adding WeChat? This made Lin Yuan difficult.

For NGO organizations like OCR, something could go wrong any day. Lin Yuan remembered the last admission letter incident, and the most troublesome part was that phone record.

Fortunately, that call was short enough, and Lin Yuan insisted it was a harassment call. Moreover, the boss of the printing shop that made fake documents was good at his business; the cameras installed in his shop were pure decorations—they had surveillance footage but wouldn’t save to the hard drive.

Therefore, Lin Yuan was able to escape that ordeal due to insufficient evidence.

As for exchanging emails with OCR, Lin Yuan was not afraid. Because OCR was a legitimate organization properly registered in HK, at least on the surface, it was legal.

Lin Yuan’s emails also didn’t violate any taboos. Even if OCR’s misdeeds came to light in the future, Lin Yuan could completely put on an innocent smile and say, “I don’t know, I didn’t know the other party was such an organization. If I had known earlier, I would definitely…”

But since the other party requested to add WeChat, it was likely not purely formal communication, and it would be easy to discuss some borderline things.

Most importantly.

The email address Lin Yuan used to send emails to the other party was a specially purchased anonymous account online, but WeChat had to be real-name verified.

Computational resources, yes please. Risks, no thank you.

What to do? This was difficult now.

Tell the other party not to add WeChat and just use email as a chat tool? This was clearly unrealistic.

Just by thinking with his toes, the other party’s request for WeChat most likely had the purpose of asking him to pledge his loyalty.

Lin Yuan struggled for a while, and finally, helpless, he had no choice but to use his own WeChat account.

As the saying goes, if you don’t enter the tiger’s den, how can you catch the tiger cub? He could only try his best to use linguistic artistry in subsequent communications with the other party.

(PS: The reasonable plot here should obviously not be like this. Were those devils in “No More Bets” troubled by the real-name system? Never mind, 404 warning…)

Lin Yuan sent his WeChat ID via email amidst great hesitation.

Soon after, he received a friend request.

“Enterprise WeChat: OCR Application Specialist No. 12, requests to add you as a friend!”

This nickname was quite direct. And it was even an Enterprise WeChat, very formal.

After Lin Yuan accepted the application, he began chatting with the other party.

“Hello Lin Student, how should I address you?”

Now that WeChat was added, there was no need to hide his real name.

“My name is Lin Yuan, a graduate student at Zijin Aviation School. I want to apply for your company’s computational resources. I wonder what the prerequisites are?”

“Lin Student, hello. We are a non-profit organization and are happy to provide academic assistance to young students like you. We do not have explicit prerequisites; instead, we will collect your situation and submit it for review. To facilitate your access to computational resources, we hope you will communicate with me truthfully in subsequent chats.”

“Okay. Can we start now?”

“Of course.”

“What is Lin Student’s major?”

“Computer Science and Technology.”

“What is the size and purpose of the computational resources you are applying for?”

Size? Lin Yuan was stunned at first. Couldn’t they just speak Chinese? He reacted for a while, connecting the context, and then roughly understood: size should refer to the total amount of computational resources he needed to apply for.

For Lin Yuan, the more computational power, the better, of course.

“May I venture to ask if it’s possible to apply for computational power equivalent to one or two H100 GPUs? I don’t need it for too long, about 5 days will be enough.”

Five days would be enough for Lin Yuan to run the first draft of his algorithm. After that, he could use this algorithm draft to convince Hao Tuan Company of his abilities, and then he could naturally ask Good Group to invest resources. At that time, he wouldn’t need to deal with OCR anymore.

OCR, for Lin Yuan, was like a toilet.

Lin Yuan was like someone with an upset stomach now—he needed to obtain high-performance computing equipment to run the first draft of his algorithm in a short time, but he clearly wasn’t eligible to apply through the school, not even by asking his supervisor, because the school had its rules.

And at Hao Tuan Company, it was also due to rules.

For both the school and Good Group, Lin Yuan was considered a newcomer. A newcomer who wanted others to break rules for him needed to show some results. But without computational power, he couldn’t produce results. Lin Yuan was caught in a “chicken and egg dilemma.”

So, OCR was the key to breaking this dilemma. But due to OCR’s nature as an NGO organization, Lin Yuan naturally understood the principle of “a gentleman does not stand under a tottering wall.” It was better to have less contact with them. He didn’t want to be invited for tea by the Ministry of State Security.

Therefore, for Lin Yuan, OCR was just like a toilet when he had an upset stomach—he really wanted it at the moment, but would despise it once he was done.

Lin Yuan waited anxiously for the other party’s reply, worried that they would think he was asking for too much.

“What do you plan to compute, Lin Student? Is the data very large and complex?”

“It’s for running AI training related to food delivery.”

There was nothing to hide. Because since he was going to use their computational equipment, what secret could there be if the data ran on their equipment? Unless he did some obfuscation on the data, obfuscating it so that ordinary people wouldn’t know what the data was for after seeing it. Then, after the training, he would reverse-engineer the training results based on the obfuscation logic.

But where would Lin Yuan find the time for that? What he lacked most now was time. School was about to start, and he had no spare time to concoct an obfuscation strategy.

“Lin Student, why did you think of caring about the food delivery field? This is very different from your school’s characteristic?”

At this point in the conversation, Lin Yuan already felt that the other party was not unable to provide high-performance computing equipment; otherwise, why bother with him? The other party must be hoping to see what leverage was worth their investment of resources.

Lin Yuan first tentatively asked, “It’s precisely because I care about democracy, freedom, and human rights, so I wanted to statistically analyze the current situation of the food delivery industry.”

He did not mention his original intention of training food delivery and routing algorithms, but rather used the other party’s rhetoric to force his actions into the other party’s values.

“Then, Lin Student, how do you view the delivery riders group?”

How to view them? Lin Yuan had personally worked as a delivery riders, so he had the most say.

“Of course, delivery riderss are a very tough group.” Keeping in mind that he wasn’t familiar with the other party, Lin Yuan didn’t complain too much, but expressed his views very restrainedly.

“It seems Lin Student, although majoring in CS, is quite interested in sociology?”

Lin Yuan really wanted to say: What I’m most interested in now is money.

But based on his understanding of NGO-type organizations, Lin Yuan still followed the other party’s words. “Occasionally, I pay attention.”

“Then what was your original intention for paying attention to the food delivery group? To care about their hardships?”

“Yes.” Lin Yuan felt he didn’t even need to answer, because the other party had already answered for him.

“Very good, it’s an honor to have this meaningful interview with Lin Student. I will submit this interview record. To increase the probability of approval, I suggest Lin Student submit a sample of your food delivery training data. Is that okay?”

“Of course, it is.”

“Okay, I will send you the data submission method shortly.”

There was no problem with submitting data. It was still the same saying: if he was going to use their equipment for training, why worry about data privacy issues?

After the chat, Lin Yuan realized: the other party wouldn’t be treating him as an angry youth, would they? Otherwise, why would they talk about the food delivery industry with him?

“Am I being seen as a cynical future public intellectual in the making? Then I’d better act the part.”

“How to act? I got it, I’ll cut the income of the delivery riderss in the submitted data by half. Hehe, that should really suit their taste.”