Senior, do you dare to make a bet with me

The freshman class meeting for Yuanpei College was scheduled in Room 203 of the Science Teaching Building.

Those sitting here were either the top scorers of the college entrance examination from various provinces or gold medalists in various competitions. Any one of them could easily dominate at a regular university.

The counselor was a male teacher in his early thirties surnamed Zhou. Wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses, he looked quite amiable.

The procedure was very cliché: everyone took turns going up to introduce themselves, followed by an election for class committee members.

Chen Zhi had zero interest in running for class cadre.

After all, he didn't need to take the postgraduate entrance exam or the civil service exam, nor did he need to build up his resume for a job. Running for a class position would just be asking for trouble.

With that time, he might as well spend more time with Lin Wanwan, or go cure the mental illness of that bad woman Pei Ningxue, or go to Renmin University to tease Little Zhiyi.

Wasn't that much better than being a workhorse for the counselor?

"Hey, Brother Chen." Guo Yang, who was next to him, nudged him with his elbow and lowered his voice. "What do you think of the girl in the white dress in the front row?"

Chen Zhi looked up and glanced over.

She was indeed quite pretty, with regular features and fair skin. She hardly wore any makeup and belonged to the girl-next-door type. In an ordinary class, she would definitely be the class beauty, held in the palms of the boys' hands.

But Chen Zhi merely took one look and withdrew his gaze, lacking interest.

"She's okay. Her nose is a bit flat, and her eyes aren't big enough."

Guo Yang's eyes widened. "That's just 'okay'? Brother Chen, your standards are way too high! Back in our high school, she'd be school beauty material!"

Chen Zhi smiled and said nothing.

This was a classic case of it being hard to go from luxury to frugality.

Facing a superstar-level beautiful girl like Lin Wanwan every day, being teased by a nation-ruining temptress like Pei Ningxue, and having a gentle first love like Li Zhiyi waiting for him.

His aesthetic threshold had long been pulled into the stratosphere.

The current Chen Zhi was basically in a sage state of "with no women in my heart, my blade is naturally divine."

Did these plain janes really think they could catch his eye?

The self-introductions on stage continued.

Everyone was a top scorer or gold medalist from their respective provinces, so who didn't have a bit of pride? Although their self-introductions sounded modest, reading between the lines, they were all humblebragging.

Things like "I don't have any special talents, I just won two international gold medals," or "I'm usually quite lazy, I just took the exam casually."

When it was Chen Zhi's turn, he slowly walked up to the podium.

Although yesterday's "Rolls-Royce incident" had caused an uproar over at the Guanghua School of Management, it hadn't spread that widely at Yuanpei yet. After all, they weren't in the same college.

"Hello everyone, my name is Chen Zhi."

"I'm from Jiangcheng. My specialties are repairing computers, reinstalling operating systems, and applying screen protectors."

"My hobby is sleeping. I hope to get along peacefully with everyone, thank you."

With that said, he bowed and stepped down from the stage without a single word of nonsense.

The whole class was stunned for a moment before bursting into good-natured laughter.

Was this the low profile of a big shot?

Returning to his seat, Li Zicong straightened his collar and stood up with a serious face.

"You're going to run for a position?" Chen Zhi glanced at him.

Li Zicong nodded. "Yeah, my dad said that in a place like Peking University, connections are more important than knowledge. Being the class monitor will be a great resource in the future, whether for graduate school recommendations or anything else."

Chen Zhi gave him a thumbs-up. "Good luck, Monitor Li."

Li Zicong walked up to the podium brimming with confidence.

It had to be said that the rich second generation indeed had an aura. He didn't humblebrag, nor did he have stage fright. Instead, he pragmatically outlined a few plans and even promised to cover half of the expenses for future class team-building activities.

This wave of "money power" speech was highly effective.

After all, no one wanted to hold a grudge against money.

In the final voting segment, Li Zicong won the position of class monitor without any suspense.

...

As soon as the class meeting ended, Chen Zhi slipped away.

His top priority right now was not socializing, but focusing on technology.

The reward AI large model "Moss" given by the system was still lying quietly in his USB flash drive.

This thing was a gold mine, but someone had to know how to mine it.

Although Chen Zhi understood a little bit of code, asking him to train models and optimize algorithms was something he couldn't do even if his life depended on it.

He didn't return to the dorm but headed straight to Science Building No. 2.

That was the territory of the School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science at Peking University.

According to his memories from his past life, at this time, Peking University had not yet established the "General Artificial Intelligence Experimental Class," but there was one place that was a holy land for all top tech geeks: the Geek Lab.

It was currently the most hardcore place in the AI field at Peking University, and also the place with the most hidden dragons and crouching tigers.

He pushed open the lab door, which was covered with various anime stickers and coding jokes.

Dozens of students were sitting around a few large tables in the middle, listening intently to something.

At the very front, a boy wearing a plaid shirt was giving a lecture.

The whiteboard behind him was densely covered with mathematical formulas and neural network architecture diagrams.

Chen Zhi found an inconspicuous corner and sat down.

A boy next to him was holding a laptop and frantically taking notes. Chen Zhi leaned over and asked in a low voice, "Classmate, who is the big shot giving the lecture up there? He looks quite young."

The boy didn't even look up, typing rapidly on his keyboard. "You must be a freshman, right? You don't even know God Dai?"

"God Dai?"

"Dai Damai! The legend of our School of EECS!" The boy's tone was full of worship. "He's only in his first year of his PhD this year, and he's already published more than a dozen papers at top conferences like CVPR and ICCV! He's an absolute master. I heard many big tech companies have offered him a million-yuan annual salary to poach him for algorithm development, but he completely ignores them."

Chen Zhi's eyes instantly lit up.

Dai Damai.

He was entirely too familiar with this name.

If the global AI trend after 2023 was ChatGPT, then domestically, the only company that could go head-to-head with OpenAI was the one called DeepSeek.

DeepSeek's open-source model had pressed the fast-forward button for future AI training speeds.

The speed of AI advancement after 2024 was faster than the previous five years combined.

And Dai Damai was one of the core members of DeepSeek's earliest founding team, the legendary architect of the V1 to V3 models.

Who would have thought that this great deity was currently still holed up in a school lab giving lectures to his juniors?

Chen Zhi looked at the senior on stage, who was speaking with spit flying and occasionally scratching his hair, as if looking at a walking gold mine.

If he could fool him... oh no, invite him over to work for himself, wouldn't his business empire take off?

However, geniuses of this caliber usually had some quirks.

They either viewed money as dirt or had their eyes fixed above the top of their heads.

Trying to throw money at him would probably be a bit difficult. But Chen Zhi understood that to deal with this kind of tech master, he had to conquer him with technology.

At this moment, Dai Damai on stage had just finished explaining a section on the optimization of the Transformer architecture.

He unscrewed his cup, took a sip of water, and pushed up his glasses. "Alright, that's it for the theoretical part today. Does anyone have any questions regarding the future development direction of AI?"

Several hands immediately shot up from the audience.

Dai Damai casually pointed to a girl in the front row.

The girl stood up and asked somewhat nervously, "Senior, everyone says AI is the current trend, but I've read many reports stating that its practical applications are actually quite limited and mostly auxiliary. What do you think the relationship between AI and humans will be like in the future?"

It was a very standard question.

It was also the mainstream narrative in both academia and industry back in 2021.

Dai Damai smiled and answered effortlessly, "That's a broad question, but it's easy to answer. Current AI, whether in NLP or CV, is essentially just finding the optimal solution within the probability distribution of big data."

"So I believe that for a very long time, AI will merely be humanity's best tool."

"Just like the steam engine during the Industrial Revolution, or computers today. It can help us write code, make reports, or even draw, greatly improving our work efficiency. But it has no consciousness and no creativity. It will always be the used, while humans are the users."

"Human-machine collaboration, human-in-the-loop, this will be the main theme of the next decade."

A wave of nodding and agreement murmured through the audience.

After all, in 2021, ChatGPT had not yet released its world-stunning model, and everyone thought AI was just a slightly smarter tool.

Dai Damai was also satisfied with his own answer and prepared to call on the next person.

Just then.

In the corner, a hand was raised high.

Dai Damai paused for a moment and pointed to the corner, "The student in the white T-shirt, do you have a different opinion?"

Chen Zhi stood up.

Everyone's eyes turned to look at him.

Chen Zhi wore an enigmatic smile. His voice was not loud, but it was exceptionally clear in the quiet laboratory.

"Senior, sorry to interrupt."

"I think what you said is wrong."

The lab instantly erupted into a commotion.

Who is this guy? So arrogant?

How dare he stand in the Geek Lab and tell God Dai to his face that he is wrong?

The guy taking notes next to him was so scared that he scooted over, afraid of getting caught in the crossfire.

Dai Damai didn't get angry; he just looked at Chen Zhi with interest. "Oh? You look very unfamiliar, junior. So, where do you think I'm wrong?"

Chen Zhi calmly walked out from the last row, stepping toward the podium.

"It's not just a part of it. It's all wrong."

Chen Zhi stood still, his gaze sweeping across the room before finally landing on Dai Damai.

"You said AI will just be a tool in the future?"

Chen Zhi shook his head, extending a finger and wagging it. "Your vision is too narrow, senior."

"I believe AI isn't a tool at all."

"It is a completely new species."

"In the near future... perhaps even next year, or the year after." Chen Zhi's tone suddenly became serious.

"AI will no longer just assist humans."

"It will start to think, experience hallucinations, possess reasoning abilities, and even... pass the Turing test."

"It will replace eighty percent of the future jobs of everyone sitting here. Writing code? Making reports? Drawing? I'm sorry, but by then, AI will do it ten thousand times better than you, ten thousand times faster, and it will be ten thousand times cheaper."

"The creativity that humans pride themselves on will be worthless in the face of stacked computing power."

The entire lab fell silent.

A few seconds later, whispers spread through the crowd, along with a few sneers.

"Has this guy watched too many sci-fi movies?"

"Hallucinations? Reasoning? What nonsense is he dreaming about?"

"Replace us in writing code? What a joke, current AI can't even figure out a bubble sort."

Dai Damai laughed as well.

He crossed his arms and looked at this arrogant freshman. "Classmate, fantasies are beautiful. But when it comes to technology, we need logic and evidence."

"What you're talking about is just the script from Terminator. The current bottleneck in computing power and algorithmic architecture simply cannot support the 'strong AI' you're describing."

"You say it will replace us, but on what grounds?"

Dai Damai pushed up his glasses, his eyes turning sharp, displaying the absolute confidence of a top-tier scholar in his field of expertise.

"Just based on your mouth?"

The audience erupted into a burst of laughter.

Facing the mockery of the entire room, Chen Zhi didn't panic in the slightest.

He reached into his pants pocket and touched the silver USB drive.

The USB drive rewarded by the system, containing the Moss Beginner Edition.

Although it was a beginner edition, it was a large model based on future architecture, which was a dimensional strike in 2021.

Chen Zhi took the USB drive out of his pocket and gently placed it on the podium.

"Based on this."

Chen Zhi raised his head and looked directly into Dai Damai's eyes.

"Senior, do you dare to make a bet with me?"

"If the thing inside here can write code that is ten times more exquisite than that algorithm you're so proud of..."

"You will tear up that million-dollar annual salary offer of yours."

"And from now on, you work for me."

"How about it?"