Development of productivity started in 1981

Chapter 200 Artificial Intelligence Research Layout
In the early morning of January 1984, 1, Wang Jiankun piloted the "Thunderbird" hypersonic aircraft across the Eurasian continent and arrived at a small base on the edge of Yanshan Mountain in BJ.

After several months of construction, the underground here has become quite large. He usually uses his superpowers to dig whenever he has time, and he stops only when he has used up his ability to mobilize elements for the day. However, there are still relatively few people here. Wang Jiankun temporarily only regards this place as the starting point and return point for his long journey.

After landing, he took the time to rest. Although the flight time across the Eurasian continent was not long, the distance exceeded the maximum flight distance of the "Thunderbird", so he had to use his superpowers to capture exhaust gas and convert it into fuel at an altitude of 3 meters, which consumed a lot of his energy.

There are still two courses to be taken in the first semester of the freshman year. After the exams tomorrow, they will have a holiday and can leave school. Wang Jiankun's clone has not revealed any flaws in these 2 days and has passed almost all the exams with full marks.

After Wang Jiankun woke up, he checked the memories that his clone had transmitted back over the past few days at the base. He focused on recording some special scenes, and then projected all other memories into his mind in the form of pictures and text.

It was not until that afternoon that Wang Jiankun returned to Tsinghua University to replace his clone, and then returned to the dormitory to resume his normal university life.

"Jiankun, are you really not going back to Wuyuan with us?" That evening Fang Guihua and several other fellow students from Tsinghua University ran to his dormitory to confirm with him again about going home for the winter vacation.

"Well, I have to wait for my sister and then take her to see BJ. Then we'll go back together. You guys should go back first. You've been away from home for nearly half a year."

"You asked your sister to come to BJ to play during the winter vacation. That's great. My brother and sister also want to come and play, but our family conditions are average and the adults can't spare the time." Yu Min said.

"Yes, it's harder to buy tickets during the winter vacation. Fortunately, the student union will help us buy the tickets when we go back. Otherwise, we don't know how long we will have to wait in line if we go to buy them ourselves." Cheng Ming said.

"I heard that Wu Xiaoyi will take a plane back this time, and he doesn't have to squeeze on the train for more than 30 hours like us." Lang Junjian said.

When Wang Jiankun was in Europe, he received a briefing from his clone, which mentioned that Wu Xiaoyi came to him and asked if he wanted to get him a plane ticket back to his hometown. He could fly directly from BJ to Hongdu, and then take a train from Hongdu to Raozhou. In this way, he could reach Wuyuan on the same day without having to squeeze into the train.

Wang Jiankun's clone told Wu Xiaoyi that it was not necessary according to the previous plan. He wanted to wait for his family to come to BJ for a visit before going home, so Wu Xiaoyi didn't say anything more.

"I heard that his father was promoted to mayor of Raozhou, so it's not surprising that he could get a plane ticket." said the well-informed Hu Chunming.

"Yes, our county has been developing faster and faster in the past two years under the leadership of his father. I heard that our county was able to manufacture motorcycles last month, which are better than Jialing's motorcycles." Cheng Ming said.

Wang Jiankun didn't expect that his fellow villagers were so well-informed about the news from their hometown. After arriving in Beijing, he reduced the number of times he used a text machine to contact his family, and he would go to the base every time he sent and received messages. This is the capital, and the school is very close to office offices and some important scientific research institutes, so abnormal unregistered shortwave communications are very likely to be monitored.

Nowadays, the application of digital signals has been implemented in almost all major countries. Under the leapfrog technology of the Xingzhou Group, countries have accelerated their research on digital signals. Therefore, China must have conducted research on digital encryption. Wang Jiankun did not dare to bet whether the country had the ability to decipher his communications here.

Therefore, when he conducts confidential communications with overseas and domestic parties, he always returns to the base, where he has worked tirelessly to build a fiber-optic communication line. The transmitting and receiving ends are both on a small island in the Bohai Bay far away from BJ and Tianjin. Once the signal reaches the island, it can be transmitted to distant places through the coastal communication network. This complex method can keep his current external communications secret to the greatest extent possible.

After that, several fellow villagers chatted in his dormitory for a long time before going back. They didn’t chat too late because there were a few final exams tomorrow. Although they had Wang Jiankun’s guidance and studying was easier, the other students in Wang Jiankun’s dormitory were already a little unhappy.

"Jiankun, you have so many fellow villagers. Judging from your accents, you are all from the same county?" Dormitory head Meng Kun asked Wang Jiankun after seeing that all his classmates had left.

"Yes, they are all from the same county. Our class did better in the exam, so more of them came to Tsinghua University."

"Then your high school's teaching level is very good. I was the only one in my high school who was admitted to Tsinghua University, and another one was admitted to Renmin University. The others were all admitted to ordinary schools. So I couldn't meet any fellow countrymen when I came to Tsinghua, because no one from the previous classes was admitted to BJ's school."

"Haha~, that's pretty miserable, but it should get better and better. Just hope that your juniors will get more scores!"

"It's still quite difficult. The conditions in our inland northwest are already poor. Now with the reform and opening up, the gap between us and the east and west has become even bigger, and it's even harder to get into a good school. I was able to get in mainly on my own. The teachers could hardly teach me anything after my second year of high school, and I taught myself everything." Meng Kun said proudly.

"Then you should repay your hometown after you have learned well. It was not easy to train you."

"It's difficult! I didn't know much about the major I applied for at that time. When I was a child, I often saw reports about Chen Jingrun, saying how great this mathematician was and how he brought glory to the country. I was excited at the time, thinking that my math grades were okay, so I applied for the Department of Mathematics, thinking that I would be able to study the world's difficult problems in the future and bring glory to the country. I didn't expect that after studying in school for a while, I found that it was too difficult to achieve great results in mathematics. I don't even know what use what I am learning now will be in the future." Seeing that Wang Jiankun was willing to listen, Meng Kun talked about the reasons why he entered the Department of Mathematics and his current confusion.

Wang Jiankun lived in the same dormitory with Meng Kun and often sat next to him in class. He was familiar with Meng Kun's homework and quiz results. He knew that although Meng Kun had a good brain, he was still constrained by his previous closed-minded thinking and believed that everything had a standard answer. Therefore, it was difficult for him to have groundbreaking theoretical research in mathematics. However, he should have an advantage in applied mathematics.

So he suggested to Meng Kun: "Brother Kun, you know computers, right? Why don't you focus on mathematical applications and combine them with computers for research? Maybe you can get results faster. There is still relatively little research in this area in China, and even other countries in the world have only just started in this area."

"Research combining mathematics and computers? Are you talking about the supercomputer developed by our Department of Information and Electronic Sciences? I don't have the ability to access such super equipment now, and the school doesn't have the ability to buy one." Meng Kun said.

"You can start with something simple. It's impossible to use a supercomputer right away. For example, a lot of mathematics can be applied on a personal computer. If you want, I can help introduce it to you."

Wang Jiankun knew that Lang Junjian had encountered many bottlenecks in his research on artificial intelligence, mainly in data analysis, data training and evaluation. This required the participation of someone who was very good at mathematics. Wang Jiankun had the ability, but he had too many things to do and did not have the energy to help Lang Junjian. In addition, as artificial intelligence was used more and more in industry and social fields, more talents would be needed. Therefore, it was impossible for him and Lang Junjian to conduct a thorough research on artificial intelligence.

"Jiankun, thank you so much, but personal computers are still very expensive, right? Will it be expensive for me to use one?" Meng Kun's family might be of average condition, and he usually spends very frugally, and rarely eats meat, so he is a little afraid of computers, which cost tens of thousands of dollars.

"Brother Kun, don't worry. A top student like you can go there to do research. Not only will they not charge you any money, they will also give you some transportation and food subsidies depending on the situation."

"So good? Jiankun, tell me where it is quickly." When Meng Kun heard Wang Jiankun say this, his eyes lit up instantly, and he pulled Wang Jiankun's hand and said excitedly.

"Relax, Kun. You're holding on too tightly."

"Haha~, sorry Jiankun, I'm so happy. Can you tell me which unit is so good? Will they want me?" Meng Kun smiled awkwardly and moved his hand away from Wang Jiankun, but still approached him and asked in a low voice.

"It's a Hong Kong-funded company called Xingyao Group. They have an artificial intelligence research institute in BJ and are currently recruiting capable people to join. The location is on Zhongguancun Street."

"Ah? Is it the Hong Kong-funded company that developed supercomputers together with our Department of Information and Electronic Sciences? And what is artificial intelligence? I don't understand. I only know mathematics."

Meng Kun had obviously never heard of the term artificial intelligence, or had heard it but it did not leave an impression on him. At this time, there were probably no more than 20 people in China who knew about artificial intelligence, so it was understandable that Meng Kun did not know about it.

So Wang Jiankun gave him some popular science education.

“The concept of ‘artificial intelligence’ was first proposed by human neuroscientist John McCarthy in 1956.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a new technical science that studies and develops theories, methods, technologies and application systems for simulating, extending and expanding human intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that attempts to understand the essence of intelligence and produce new intelligent machines that can respond in a similar way to human intelligence. Research in this field includes robotics, speech recognition, image recognition, natural language processing, and expert systems.

Artificial intelligence is called "artificial intelligence" because it is created and controlled by humans. The word "artificial" indicates the control of new technologies by humans and emphasizes the responsibility of humans for technology. Artificial intelligence can have knowledge representation and reasoning capabilities, autonomous decision-making capabilities (including intelligent planning and coordination capabilities), natural language understanding and natural language generation capabilities, computer vision and object recognition capabilities, automatic monitoring and fault diagnosis capabilities, etc. These capabilities enable it to perform tasks that usually require human participation, such as image processing, speech recognition, natural language processing and autonomous driving. "

After Meng Kun digested the concept of "artificial intelligence" explained by Wang Jiankun, he went on to explain to him the development of "artificial intelligence".

"In 1943, Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts proposed the basic model of artificial neural networks. Subsequently, Turing proposed the "Turing Test", which envisioned a test method to determine whether a machine has true intelligence.

The term "artificial intelligence" was first proposed at the Dartmouth Conference in 1956, marking its emergence as an independent research field. During this period, with the advancement of computer technology and a large amount of research funding, artificial intelligence has made significant progress.

Subsequently, between 1974 and 1980, due to high research costs, lack of practical applications, and disappointment caused by excessive expectations, artificial intelligence research entered a state of stagnation, which was called the "AI winter."

At this stage, some artificial intelligence applications have been opened up abroad, and the developed artificial intelligence expert systems have been widely used to simulate the decision-making process of human experts and provide consultation for specific tasks.

However, the current cost of using these applications is relatively high, the reliability is relatively poor, and the application scope is very narrow. It is precisely because of this situation that Xingyao Group hopes to seize this stage of stagnation in foreign development and cooperate with domestic talents to develop a widely applicable artificial intelligence system to provide a continuous source of power for the development of science and technology and productivity. "

After Wang Jiankun finished speaking, he drank some water and asked Meng Kun to digest it.

After a long time, Meng Kun was still a little confused. He now had some understanding of artificial intelligence, but he just couldn't figure out how mathematics played a role in it.

"Jiankun, I still don't understand how mathematics is applied to artificial intelligence systems. Can you explain it to me in detail?"

"Um, Brother Kun, you have an exam tomorrow. How about I take you there to see the scene after the exam? It's hard to explain it to you now."

"Okay, then let's go together after the exam tomorrow."

"Jiankun, can you take me with you?" Another roommate who was closest to them and secretly eavesdropped on their conversation came over and asked.

"Yes, Jiankun, take me with you. We are in the same dormitory. We can’t keep good things secret. We have to share them." Several other roommates also ran over and said.

"Ah? Weren't you reading seriously just now?" Wang Jiankun didn't expect that several roommates who were far away and holding books were actually listening to him and Meng Kun talking.

"Hehe~, freshman math is relatively simple. We are reading to kill time. We don't want to go to bed so early. Jiankun, take us with you tomorrow. We all want to see what artificial intelligence is and how it is related to math."

"Okay, let's go together tomorrow. Meet at the south gate of the school after the exam. But time is limited, and I won't wait for you if you're late!"

"Okay, then let's gather at the South Gate tomorrow." The roommates answered in unison.

Wang Jiankun does not expect all of them to participate. He thinks a few are better than few. As freshmen, they have only learned a relatively shallow level of mathematics, and the role they can play in research is relatively limited. However, they are all top students in their respective regions and have very strong learning abilities. If they happen to meet someone who is particularly talented in this area, they might be able to play a huge role.

At this time, the Xingyao Group was expanding rapidly in BJ. Because it had developed a supercomputer with a speed of 21 billion times per second together with the school's Information and Electronic Science Department, the state's support for the Xingyao Group was unprecedented.

Not only did they approve more than 1 acres of land in Zhongguancun to Xingyao Group, they also approved them to build a wholly-owned personal computer production base in Tianjin. They could approve as much land as they needed, as long as they paid the government according to the assessed price.

Therefore, the first batch of buildings to be built included the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, which covers an area of ​​more than 30 acres, with 5 floors in height and 1 underground floor. Because it is currently difficult to construct in winter, the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute is just a sign and a temporary research site built with several containers. There are some personal computers and several workstations inside for Lang Junjian and his team to conduct preliminary verification research.

At present, foreign artificial intelligence research is mainly based on computing power and computing models. Not many people are researching the neural network that was proposed earlier because it requires hardware support.

However, currently high-end semiconductor hardware is extremely expensive. It is impossible to ask capitalists to invest extra funds in the development of new hardware for this technology whose use is currently unknown.

However, through the information from Zhizi and his own research on the human brain, Wang Jiankun knew that purely relying on computing power and using fixed models was a dead end, because the current CPU has an advantage in floating-point operations. However, artificial intelligence is not just about calculating fast, it also needs to calculate in accordance with human needs.

In order to reduce the time domestic researchers spend on the wrong path, Wang Jiankun provided Xingyao Group with a lot of basic technologies, such as neuron chips and neural network training examples.

Currently, a chip manufacturing plant in Hong Kong has produced a batch of AI chips using micron wires and sent them to BJ's Artificial Intelligence Research Institute for early exploratory research.

Once people here understand what neurons and neural networks are, and how to use neural networks to develop artificial intelligence programs, they can propose the required neuron structure and chip structure. Then the chip factory in Hong Kong will have updated its production line, and higher-integrated AI chips will be able to be produced.

The first goal that Wang Jiankun gave to Lang Junjian's artificial intelligence research team was to use the developed artificial intelligence program to defeat the current world number one in chess.

Once this goal is achieved, it means that artificial intelligence can be initially applied to various fields.

After the exam the next afternoon, the roommates were very active and ran to the south gate of Tsinghua University. Wang Jiankun took them to the temporary Institute of Artificial Intelligence on Zhongguancun Street.

"Wow, Jiankun, there are so many computers and this big cabinet. Could it be a supercomputer?" After Meng Kun and his friends entered the research institute and saw the equipment displayed inside, they exclaimed.

"This cabinet contains a medium-sized computer with a computing power of 1 million times per second. The computing power of those personal computers is 150 million times per second. However, these computers are used to write programs and do some simulations. The real artificial intelligence calculations are in another confidential place. Only the official researchers who have joined can access it."

"Ah? Such an advanced computer is not an artificial intelligence computing device? How can I become a formal researcher?" Meng Kun asked.

"This requires a series of assessments. After all, not everyone can understand this technology. Now I will use the computer here to demonstrate to you how mathematics is applied to artificial intelligence. Time is limited, so I will only give you a few examples. Those who are interested can come to sign a formal research agreement with the person in charge tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, and then conduct a period of study before taking the assessment."

So for the next hour, Wang Jiankun demonstrated to his roommates the application of algebra in algorithm design and program logic, and the role of calculus in graphics processing and physical simulation.

My roommates never expected that the mathematics they learned had so many and such great applications in computer science, and they all expressed their desire to give it a try.

Wang Jiankun then wrote down their information and handed it to the staff on duty here, telling them to come here tomorrow for formal registration. If they did not go home during the winter vacation, they could study here, and if they went home, it was okay to come back after the New Year.

Among several roommates, Meng Kun and another roommate whose family conditions are relatively difficult decided not to go home for the New Year this year after learning that the subsidy here is 5 yuan a day. They will study here and earn living expenses for the next semester. If they can pass the subsequent assessments, they may be able to send money back home. The other three roommates plan to come earlier after the New Year and go back first during this winter vacation. If they don’t buy tickets by themselves, it will be difficult, so they all want to postpone their return for a few days.

Now Lang Junjian and his classmates have begun to participate in the assembly of the 21 billion-times supercomputer, some have begun to participate in the research and development of the next generation of supercomputers, and some have joined him in the research of artificial intelligence.

The Department of Mathematics where Wang Jiankun is located will also begin to participate in the research and development of artificial intelligence. I believe that with the participation of so many smart minds, the research on artificial intelligence will surely make rapid progress.

(End of this chapter)