Algorithm system

Enemy? Friend?Lin Yuan originally considered Musk an old friend with differing views.

To some extent, Lin Yuan actually agreed with Musk’s approach. Because if he were in Musk’s shoes, he wouldn’t believe he had a better way to change anything. Lin Yuan wouldn’t even have the courage to keep tinkering like Musk.

Why bother with SpaceX? Wouldn’t it be better to enjoy life with a fortune?

Matrix multi-engines, stainless steel as the rocket body, chopsticks to recover rockets, a pioneer in private spaceflight, and then adding his earlier achievements as the first to try in digital currency and electric vehicles—these 0 to 1 innovations undoubtedly showed that Musk was an extremely creative powerhouse.

But a powerhouse doesn’t mean he’s a saint, and perhaps saints don’t even exist in this world.

Lin Yuan suddenly felt that he had viewed Musk through a filter before, and his mind had been overshadowed by the other’s brilliance, causing him to overlook the human side of the other.

Lin Yuan recalled the saying: The whole world bustles for gain; the whole world scrambles for gain.

A villain will do evil for profit because a villain sees profit as his goal. So, wouldn’t a gentleman do evil for his goal, even if that goal might be noble?

But Lin Yuan didn’t want to be cannon fodder; he didn’t want to be a sacrifice for anyone or anything.

He suddenly felt that he might have been used by Musk.

Lin Yuan specifically used his computing power system to collect all kinds of information about OpenAI.

In 2015, when AI large language models were still unknown, Musk led the establishment of OpenAI.

Three years later, in 2018, the GPT-1 model with 117 million parameters was launched, a milestone product was born, although it was largely unknown to most people at the time of its birth.

Then came the common continuous iteration of IT software products; GPT-2’s parameters reached 1.5 billion.

In 2020, GPT-3’s parameters reached an astonishing 175 billion.

Before this, OpenAI was completely non-profit.

But after experiencing so many things, Lin Yuan naturally questioned this so-called non-profit nature; he wasn’t a brainless, emotional simpleton.

Behind the exponential growth of GPT model parameters was an enormous demand for computing power, and computing power needed to be provided by GPUs. So, which company’s GPUs are the strongest? In Dragon Country, Shandong asks Lanxiang! Oh, ptooey! Of course, NVIDIA’s computing cards are the most awesome.

So Lin Yuan opened NVIDIA’s stock price trend.

Coincidentally, the first surge in NVIDIA’s stock price was around the end of 2015. And OpenAI was founded in 2015.

Afterward, NVIDIA’s stock price reached its peak at the time in the second half of 2018.

It’s important to know that before this, NVIDIA was just considered a company that sold gaming graphics cards. Even later, when it was discovered that graphics cards could be used for mining, this indeed caused NVIDIA’s stock price to rise significantly. But what truly made it soar was the demand for computing power from AI.

With the dual demand of AI concepts and mining, NVIDIA’s stock price increased tenfold in just three years.

Lin Yuan believed that during this process, Musk and his group must have made a lot of money, because even Lin Yuan himself would have thought to quickly buy NVIDIA’s stock when faced with such a situation. Moreover, since OpenAI was founded by Musk, he could completely cooperate with the needs of the stock market and release timely information about AI.

Then Lin Yuan reviewed some past events related to digital currencies before 2020, and vaguely, he again discovered some traces of Musk in them.

Under the powerful data retrieval capabilities of the computing power system, even the smallest clue could not escape.

Compared to his later blatant hype of dogecoin and other digital currencies, Lin Yuan found that Musk had actually been involved with digital currencies much earlier.

This is also very easy to understand. Because NVIDIA’s trend before 2020 was essentially driven by both AI and digital currencies. Since Musk was involved with AI, why wouldn’t he also get involved with digital currencies?

Picking up one egg is picking up, and picking up two is also picking up. It’s a fool not to make money when you can.

Lin Yuan’s eyes were opened. Sure enough, the grander the ideal, the more unscrupulous the means.

How could Musk have so much money to burn on rockets if he didn’t severely fleece the stock market?

No wonder Eagle Country attracted so many tech talents for a long time previously; because it had the world’s most open and developed financial market, and could absorb global capital through its hegemony. There, it was simply too easy to monetize technology by collecting tech taxes.

As long as you had exclusive technology, you could package it with a story and quickly profit in the stock market.

A tenfold return there was hardly even a typical case.

Naturally, for groundbreaking fields like aerospace that require enormous capital, only there could money be raised quickly.

US dollars and technology—these were the empire’s two sharp blades.

Lin Yuan realized this more intuitively from the development history of OpenAI and NVIDIA.

Originally, playing this way was quite good, using this set of methods to attract the world’s strong people, and the strong people would band together to bully the world’s other weak people.

However, the core foundation of this set of play still required creating value through hard-core technology.

Without a final value anchor, the stock market’s story couldn’t continue.

But realizing value is a very hard process; it’s a process of concrete work. And for AI, it’s still in a phase that requires long-term investment. In short, the AI field hasn’t reached the point where one can pick the fruits.

But seeing the other lords of the empire gorging themselves, patience at this moment could no longer be maintained.

So, in 2020, OpenAI shifted to a commercial path to obtain continuous funding.

Before this, OpenAI had already burned through a billion US dollars, and it was clear they would burn through even more. Therefore, introducing external capital was a reluctant move.

Lin Yuan really wanted to ask Musk, was OpenAI really that expensive in its first few years?

Lin Yuan summoned his computing power system panel and looked at it, lamenting that OpenAI, which had already spent 20 billion US dollars, was like a little brother in front of his computing power. Then wouldn’t he himself possess hundreds of billions, no, perhaps tens of thousands of US dollars? Computing power system, truly amazing!

Lin Yuan pulled back his thoughts. He was very clear that OpenAI’s main focus was on the research and development of the GPT model. Although large language models require huge development investment and also need to purchase a large number of GPU computing cards.

But it shouldn’t have burned through a billion US dollars in the early stages.

This could only mean that the efficiency of cutting-edge scientific research in Eagle Country was declining. This gave the impression of an empire in decline, unable to even maintain its core competencies.

After introducing external capital led by Microsoft, the GPT-3 launched by OpenAI officially opened its paid API.

Since it began to adopt a commercial paid API call model, it naturally could no longer follow an open-source route. Otherwise, if the code were taken by others, anyone could set up their own API service as long as they had enough machines.

Therefore, the moment OpenAI went commercial, Musk perhaps was already destined to lose control of OpenAI.

In the same year, at the end of 2020, NVIDIA’s stock price began its second surge. And this timing coincided with OpenAI’s introduction of external capital and its move towards commercialization.

Then came the sudden emergence of ChatGPT at the end of 2022. After a long period of fluctuations, NVIDIA’s stock price, riding on the huge momentum of ChatGPT, surged again.

But Lin Yuan understood ChatGPT; that thing was indeed a groundbreaking product at the time. However, limited by the inherent problems of AI, while ChatGPT took a big step forward in human-computer dialogue and could even handle a large number of mathematical and programming problems, it still hadn’t achieved a qualitative breakthrough in large language models.

So, in Lin Yuan’s view, from OpenAI’s establishment until now, only the stock market has been in its prime, and its only profit point is the paid API calls of ChatGPT.

However, API fees are clearly insufficient to support the high market capitalization of NVIDIA and other AI-related companies.

To exaggerate, these fees are barely enough to cover the electricity costs and hardware depreciation for AI training.

So, what is the current situation?

Lin Yuan saw the struggle of a sunset empire; under the setting sun, the empire wanted to reach new heights in technology to reverse its decline.

However, the empire’s elites, in reality, treated technology as material for storytelling.

The sharp blade of technology was already tottering in the empire’s hands.

And as this technological blade falls, another blade based on it—seigniorage—will also vanish into thin air.

Lin Yuan was unsure whether Musk truly wanted to save the empire, or if he merely wanted to bring OpenAI back on track out of his personal ambition for future technology.

But when the empire’s elites collectively treat technology as storytelling material, when a large number of people are frantically profiting from the stocks of those few AI-related companies, how can OpenAI, which serves as storytelling material, continue to remain non-profit?

Lin Yuan instinctively sensed the complex web of interests involved; those who invested in OpenAI and those who profited from AI concepts in the stock market might not be the same group of forces. There must be money from all over the world mixed in.

The profits reaped from the stock market by telling AI stories are essentially an overdrawing of OpenAI’s future profitability.

The sapling hasn’t even grown up, and you’re already earning future money. So, what would the investors in OpenAI think? Damn it, we’re genuinely investing to do things, and you’re bypassing us to directly pluck the peaches from the stock market. Why!

If the investors in OpenAI and the stock market profiteers were strictly the same group of people, then everything would be fine. The profits from the stock market could even be invested in AI research and development, which would bring it back to Musk’s model—he has long subsidized technological research and development by profiting from the stock market.

But based on Lin Yuan’s understanding of Eagle Country, that place is a convergence point for immigrants and capital from all over the world, characterized by its colorful and diverse nature. Expecting them to work together with one heart and mind?

It’s a joke; the core of their system is brutal mutual checks and balances. Yes, checks and balances.

Lin Yuan did not think Eagle Country’s system was called mutual checks and balances. Damn it, that’s not how checks and balances work; when doing something, if a group of people don’t even have a unified goal, can that be called checks and balances? It’s clearly like a car where all four wheels are driving in different directions.

And a most significant characteristic of an empire in twilight is that no single force can coordinate all parties anymore. Take OpenAI, for example: profiting from the stock market with the AI concept is fine, but after profiting, a portion must be used to give back to AI research and development.

Allow OpenAI to consistently maintain a truly open stance, then leverage the open-source community to gather global strength, and subsequently achieve technological advancement and conceptual leadership through openness.

They could even shout slogans—for AI, we only use what is open, free, and inclusive.

Then, infuse emotional value into AI products, which Lin Yuan believed Musk excels at. Once emotional value is infused, AI interfaces could be sold like luxury cars.

What, your product’s AI service isn’t from OpenAI? Then your product is too evil, not free at all.

This way, money would flow in effortlessly.

OpenAI could continue to be open source, only charging for large-scale commercial applications. It wouldn’t even need to directly collect money from users; this is how standard-setters at the top of the industrial chain operate.

However, due to their disunity, Lin Yuan only knew that many high-ranking officials in Eagle Country were stock market gurus; who knows whose pockets the profits from the Eagle Country stock market went into after the investors were harvested.

Since the bigwigs set such an example, Lin Yuan could guess how those below would follow suit.

As a result, everyone only thought about making money from the stock market and completely forgot to deliver on the stories they told.

Since everyone was doing this, why should OpenAI remain open source? Why should they make money while I provide them with free storytelling material? So OpenAI stopped being open and became today’s CloseAI.

Lin Yuan could guess Musk’s helplessness in this, because he also felt that the empire’s elites were truly short-sighted.

Killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, draining the pond to catch all the fish—trust takes a long time to build, but it collapses rapidly.

Musk’s two greatest treasures are rockets and AI. Rockets are developing well at the moment; although he is vexed by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, fortunately, SpaceX is still completely controlled by Musk.

Even if launching rockets burns a lot of money, the scale of spending is predictable, and there are clear profit prospects—aerospace orders from the Western world, and the future development of the private aerospace sector. These are stable and visible profit points.

However, AI’s profit points are vague, so even if Musk were richer, he couldn’t grasp all of OpenAI. Because idealism doesn’t mean recklessness; smart people won’t hold onto something with unclear profit expectations.

And the problem with throwing it into the market is that it might slip out of his control.

In fact, that’s what happened; Musk couldn’t stop OpenAI from becoming CloseAI.

Although Musk still publicly supported OpenAI, Lin Yuan felt that he was probably feeling bitter inside.

After analyzing all of this, Lin Yuan became certain of one thing—Musk did indeed use his hands to do something he himself dared not do.

Did Musk create a hypothetical enemy for OpenAI? Did he sound an alarm for the empire’s elites?

Lin Yuan couldn’t know his exact thoughts, so he chose to call Musk directly and confront him, ”It seems you’ve done something to displease me.”

”Uh, haha. This is a necessary process for your growth, my little brother.”

Musk didn’t try to argue.

Lin Yuan was momentarily speechless. After a long silence on the phone, Lin Yuan finally said faintly, ”I never thought the person who would urge my growth would be you. Elon, you really are a scoundrel. I gave you the intellectual property for the algorithm.”

”Hmm, I appreciate your gesture, and I will always remember it.”

”Elon, I think we’ll have many adversarial moments in the future.”

”I think so too. Lin, this is life. The path to the ideal realm is never smooth. We live to find every way to achieve our dreams, otherwise, what is the meaning of our lives? Lin, you are very young, and I admire you. I want to give you a piece of advice: your persona is just for others to see; don’t let it become a moral burden for your decisions...”

”I understand. I came from the countryside; I saw too much throwing tantrums and rolling around during my adolescence. Don’t worry, your words are easy for me to understand. I don’t have any moral burdens.”

”That’s good. I sincerely wish you well, my little brother. Because of people like you in this world, I don’t feel lonely.”

”Elon, do you enjoy displaying your compassion at others’ graves?

”Lin, I’m serious. Our positions are given to us by fate, but our ideals are chosen by ourselves. And you, my friend, even if one day I fall by your sword, I will still consider you my friend...”

Lin Yuan savored his words, ”I’ll take what you said as true for now. But I feel as if whether it’s true or false no longer matters; I will hold my sword tightly.”

”Haha, Lin, your tone is too serious. I just gave an extreme example; more accurately, we should be frenemies in the future. I hope our collaborations far outweigh our adversarial moments. I sincerely wish you well, my friend...”