Chapter 233 - 175: Clash of Styles

Chapter 233: Chapter 175: Clash of Styles

Emily rested her chin in her hand, thinking for a moment. She gradually recovered from the initial blow, her fighting spirit rekindled.

"This approach could work. Although Chen Lin has already taken the most important theoretical innovation, the engineering implementation and experimental verification are still very valuable work."

She paused, then added, "And we can also approach it from an engineering perspective and study how to optimize the algorithm’s computational efficiency. After all, a mathematically perfect algorithm isn’t necessarily efficient in practical application."

"Exactly!" Marcus slapped his thigh. "That’s the difference between CS and Math. Mathematicians just need to come up with the abstract algorithm, while we computer scientists also have to consider all sorts of engineering problems."

Exchanging ideas, the three of them quickly found their direction again.

Kevin looked at the dense plans on the whiteboard and heaved a long sigh of relief.

"Alright, let’s not overthink it. Time to get to work. I estimate there are at least dozens of research groups around the world doing the exact same thing we are right now. Whoever gets it done first gets to publish in a top conference."

"Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get to it!" Marcus immediately spun around, sat back down at his computer, and began clattering away at his keyboard.

Emily also put away her phone, took out her notebook, and began analyzing the formulas on the whiteboards in the video frame by frame.

Only Kevin, before starting, glanced one more time at the young Huaxian face on his phone screen.

He sighed to himself.

’Twenty years old...’

’When I was twenty, I was a sophomore at UCLA, drowning in anxiety over my GPA every day.’

’And this guy, Chen Lin, is already at the forefront of the mathematical world, having made an achievement that will go down in the history books.’

The gap between people can sometimes be greater than the gap between a person and a dog.

Shaking his head, Kevin pushed these stray thoughts from his mind and threw himself into his work.

...

「Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, in Huaxia.」

It was the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Though it was the middle of the night, the internet never sleeps.

Especially after the official account of the International Congress of Mathematicians formally released the complete video of Chen Lin’s live calculation on all major platforms, the entire Chinese-speaking internet completely exploded.

On Bihu.

A question titled, "How should we evaluate Chen Lin live-calculating a new AI algorithm at the International Congress of Mathematicians?" shot to the top of the trending list in just a few short hours.

It had over a million views and more than two thousand replies.

The top-voted answer came from a user verified as "Researcher at a certain 985 university’s artificial intelligence lab."

[As someone who’s been grinding in the AI industry for seven or eight years, I can tell you all with full responsibility: the importance of what Chen Lin has accomplished this time cannot be overstated.]

[The "hallucination" problem in large models has always been a persistent ailment plaguing the entire industry. You ask ChatGPT a question, and sometimes it will spout nonsense with a straight face, fabricating facts that don’t exist, and it even makes it sound completely plausible.]

[To solve this problem, giants like CloseAI, Doggie, and Meta have thrown who knows how much money and hired who knows how many PhDs, and what were the results? Very little to show for it.]

[And Chen Lin, a Huaxian undergraduate, has completely solved this problem from a theoretical level using pure mathematics!]

[After I watched the video last night, I immediately took screenshots of Chen Lin’s calculations and analyzed them line by line. Although there are many details I still don’t fully understand, I can see that the mathematical foundation of this algorithm is extremely solid, and the logical chain is complete and flawless. There’s almost nothing to question.]

[What’s even more terrifying is that this algorithm is extremely versatile. In theory, it can be applied to all generative models based on neural networks!]

[What does this mean? It means the rules of the game in the entire AI industry might be rewritten!]

Beneath this answer, the comment section was just as lively.

[So, is Chen Shen on track to win the Turing Award?]

[The poster above is thinking too small. I’ve seen other top commenters analyze it, and Chen Lin’s achievement could win him both the Fields Medal and the Turing Award. He might become the first person in history to win both!]

[Holy crap, the Fields Medal + the Turing Award? Isn’t that a double Grand Slam for the worlds of mathematics and computer science?]

[To the person above, wake up. The Fields Medal requires the recipient to be no older than 40, but Chen Lin will only be 21 at next year’s ceremony, so that’s in the bag. The Turing Award has no age limit, but it’s usually given to established titans in their fifties or sixties. If Chen Lin wants the Turing Award, he’ll probably have to wait another twenty or thirty years.]

[Twenty or thirty years? Chen Shen will only be fifty by then. That’s totally fine!]

Another highly-voted answer came from a user verified as a "current Math PhD student."

[Let me explain to my friends outside the math profession what level of difficulty Chen Lin’s calculation was.]

[First, he didn’t solve a single mathematical problem, but an entire, complex theoretical system. It involves multiple highly specialized fields like Differential Geometry, Riemannian geometry, optimization theory, and convex analysis.]

[Second, not only did he have to master and integrate these mathematical tools from different fields, but he also had to apply them to the cutting-edge, interdisciplinary problem of artificial intelligence. This kind of breadth demands an extremely high level of comprehensive literacy from a mathematician.]

[Finally, and this is the most terrifying part—he calculated it live on the spot!]

[Do you know what that means? It means the logical chain of the entire proof process in his head is clear to a hair-raising degree!]

[When I work on my own PhD research, writing a single proof takes me several days of repeated revisions, and I still have to ask my advisor to help me find the gaps. But Chen Lin, right there on stage, in front of the world’s top mathematicians, wrote out an algorithm that could change the AI industry in one single, fluid motion!]

[Holy shit, is he even human?]

Under this answer, the comment section was a sea of "Worshipping the master," "Chen Lin is the eternal GOAT," and other such sycophantic praise.

Some were also discussing comparisons between Chen Lin and the great mathematical geniuses of history.

[Chen Lin vs. Terence Tao, who’s stronger?]

[Chen Lin vs. Schultz, who’s more talented?]

[Could Chen Lin become Huaxia’s first Fields Medal winner?]

[If Chen Lin focused on pure math, could he prove the Riemann Hypothesis?]

The entire comment section was as festive as New Year’s.

...

Over on Weibo, the mood was much simpler and more direct.

The topic #ChenLinLiveCalculatesNewAIAlgorithm# shot straight to the number one trending spot, its popularity index soaring past one hundred million.

Clicking on it revealed all sorts of creative, over-the-top praise.

[Chen Lin is freaking awesome!!!]

[It’s Chen Shen again! The eternal GOAT!]

[There’s hope for Huaxian mathematics! We finally have a genius who can go head-to-head with the Beautiful Country!]

[Chen Lin: I just casually solved a problem. All the AI companies in the world: ???]

[LOL, CloseAI is probably panicking like crazy right now. After all those years of painstaking research, they get utterly crushed by a Huaxian university student.]

[I suggest Chen Shen start an AI company right now and dominate CloseAI!]

[To the person above, Chen Shen already has a company, okay? Ever heard of Yanhai Consulting?]

The comment sections on Weibo were always mainly for goofy fun and entertainment; most people were just there for a good time.

But behind these seemingly flippant comments lay the genuine pride and joy of ordinary netizens.

After all, Chen Lin was a homegrown Huaxia People, a genius cultivated by Huaxia’s own universities.

His performance on the international stage, to some extent, also represented the level of Huaxia’s fundamental scientific research.

...

In contrast, the atmosphere over on Duosoyin was far more complex.

Under every video related to Chen Lin, the comment sections were clearly divided into two factions, arguing at each other’s throats.

[Awesome! Huaxia’s fundamental scientific research has begun to rise!]

[One Chen Lin is just the beginning, and more Chen Lins will appear in the future! Catching up to the Beautiful Country is just a matter of time!]

[I believe that in the next ten years, Huaxia will definitely achieve an overtaking on a curve in the field of technology!]

[I agree! Huaxia’s education system still has its advantages when it comes to cultivating top-tier talent!]

However, there was another faction, one that proclaimed itself to be rational, objective, and neutral. But to the first group, these people were just being pessimistic.

[Don’t get ahead of yourselves. Chen Lin is an isolated case; he doesn’t represent the overall level.]

[Over in the Beautiful Country, they focus on cultivating students’ independent thinking and innovative spirit from a young age. What about us? All we do is grind practice problems.]

[Chen Lin’s achievements today might be precisely because he wasn’t ruined by the exam-oriented education. People like him are the minority of the minority.]

[Exactly. We can never surpass the Beautiful Country in fundamental Science. It’s a systemic problem, not something one or two geniuses can change.]

The two factions would argue for hundreds of comments under every video, with neither side able to convince the other.

They went back and forth, their arguments raging.

There were even some marketing accounts that specifically incited these disputes to attract traffic, deliberately adding inflammatory text to their videos and then sitting back to wait for the comment sections to erupt into a flame war.

Of course, those who too obviously provoked conflict would be muted by the platform or even have their accounts banned.