At Peking University, we support young people who dare to think and act.

A computer room in the Yanyuan Startup Incubator Base.

Although the dozens of A100 graphics cards hadn't all been mounted yet, the heat emitted just by the few servers already in operation was astonishing. The air conditioning was set to sixteen degrees Celsius, and a fan was placed in front of each server.

But these crude cooling conditions still couldn't suppress the A100s running at full load.

"Boss, I can't live like this."

Dai Damai slammed his coffee cup on the table and pointed at the pile of machines, complaining, "We're using racks meant for 3090s to brute-force the A100s. The cooling simply can't keep up. Last night, server number three almost shut down automatically due to overheating. I had to point an electric fan right at it and blow on it all night."

Chen Zhi, sitting on a small folding stool to the side, was also suffering from the heat.

"Bear with it, Lao Dai," Chen Zhi wiped the sweat from his forehead. "Our conditions are limited right now. Once our team matures, we'll immediately move to a large flat with central air conditioning."

"This isn't about the air conditioning!"

Dai Damai pointed at the messy tangle of wires. "Our current cooling solution is complete nonsense. Stuffing A100s into old 3090 server chassis completely blocks the airflow. Two nodes just triggered overheating alarms; they almost exploded!"

Dai Damai scratched his head, and a few precious strands of hair fell out. "Plus, I'm severely short-handed. Data cleaning, parameter fine-tuning, model architecture optimization... this whole mess of tasks is entirely on my shoulders. I'm sleeping less than four hours a day now. If this keeps up, I'll drop dead before Moss even grows up."

Chen Zhi rubbed his nose, feeling a bit guilty.

Indeed, looking at Dai Damai's increasingly receding hairline over the past few days, he also felt he was overworking him.

"Hire! We'll hire immediately!" Chen Zhi waved his hand grandly. "Senior, you've been in this circle for so many years, you must know a lot of top talents, right? Don't hold back. As long as they have solid technical skills, they can name their salary and stock options."

Dai Damai rolled his eyes. "I do know a few PhDs from the School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, and a few juniors interning at Microsoft Research Asia. Their skills are unquestionable, it's just..."

"Just what?"

"Just this environment of ours." Dai Damai pointed at the messy cardboard boxes and exposed wires around them. "If they come, they might think they've walked into an illegal internet cafe. Furthermore, this project of ours..."

He looked toward the door with a guilty conscience.

"We're operating against the rules here, boss. I borrowed this lab from my advisor, claiming it was for a small research project. But the moment we booted up the A100s, the power consumption skyrocketed."

"A couple of days ago, my advisor walked by and his face turned green when he saw the electricity meter. He asked me if I was running a particle collision experiment inside, or if I had secretly tapped a wire to sell electricity."

Chen Zhi laughed. "It's fine, we'll just pay the electricity bill."

"Is this about money?" Dai Damai slapped his thigh anxiously.

Just as they were talking, a sudden knock came from the door.

Dai Damai quickly turned off the monitor screen.

"Come in."

The door was pushed open, and a student wearing a red armband poked his head in, looking around the room and then at the two sweating profusely.

"Which one is Chen Zhi? Which one is Dai Damai?"

"I am." Chen Zhi stepped forward. "What's the matter, classmate?"

"The President's Office has notified that you two need to go there right now."

It was over.

Speak of the devil.

...

The President's Office

Behind the desk, Peking University President Hao Ping was wearing reading glasses, looking at a thick report in his hands.

Hearing the commotion of the two entering, Hao Ping put down the papers and looked up.

That gaze, how should one put it.

It was like an old farmer looking at two misshapen melons growing in his own field, feeling both heartache and anger.

"Sit."

Hao Ping pointed to the chairs opposite him.

Dai Damai sat down with trepidation, while Chen Zhi sat down quite naturally and generously.

"Do you know why I called you here?" Hao Ping took off his glasses and rubbed his temples.

Just as Dai Damai was about to open his mouth to admit his mistake, Chen Zhi kicked him under the table.

"I have a rough idea," Chen Zhi smiled. "Perhaps it's because our electricity usage has been a bit abnormal lately?"

"Abnormal?"

Hao Ping sneered and slammed the stack of reports onto the desk.

"You call this a bit abnormal? Look for yourselves!"

Hao Ping pointed at the numbers on the report. "Your lab's electricity consumption over the past month is more than the entire teaching building combined. The teachers in the logistics department thought there was a power leakage, but upon investigation, it all came from your room."

"Two students, what kind of project could possibly use this much electricity?"

Hao Ping stared at Chen Zhi and Dai Damai, his tone turning severe. "Bitcoin is hyped up out there right now, and many students are getting crooked ideas. Tell me honestly, are you mining in the school's computer room?"

In 2021, it was the craziest time for virtual currencies, and also the time when the state cracked down on them the most severely.

Cases of university students using the school's free electricity to mine were not uncommon.

Dai Damai's face turned pale, and he hurriedly waved his hands. "President, we are wronged! We really aren't mining! We are doing research..."

"Research?" Hao Ping obviously didn't believe it. "What kind of research requires hundreds of graphics cards spinning day and night? Can't the computing power provided by the school meet your needs?"

Chen Zhi stopped Dai Damai, who wanted to explain further.

He took out a tablet computer and placed it on Hao Ping's desk.

"President, hearing is deceiving, seeing is believing."

Chen Zhi swiped open the screen and tapped a black icon. "We are indeed mining. But we aren't mining Bitcoin, we are mining the key to the future."

Hao Ping frowned, his gaze falling on the tablet screen.

On the screen was a simple dialogue box.

"What is this?"

"Moss," Chen Zhi introduced. "The artificial intelligence large model we developed ourselves."

Hao Ping also came from a STEM background and was no stranger to AI.

He shook his head. "I've seen current AI; it just plays Go and does facial recognition. Does this thing consume that much energy?"

Chen Zhi began typing into the dialogue box. "President, have you been having a headache recently over the speech on 'The Transformation of Higher Education in the Digital Age' that you have to deliver at the Global University Presidents Forum next week?"

President Hao was taken aback. "How do you know?"

Only his secretary knew about this; the draft had been stuck for days, and he always felt it wasn't brilliant enough.

"Not only do I know, but I also know your general train of thought." Chen Zhi smiled and typed on the keyboard, "Moss, help Peking University President Hao write a speech. Requirements: Quote the concept of change from the 'I Ching', combine it with the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, and discuss the positioning of university education in the AI era. Word count: three thousand. The style should be majestic and magnificent, elegant yet sharp."

He pressed the Enter key.

On the screen, text began to flow out.

[The essence of the I Ching is change. The great virtue of heaven and earth is creation, and the great virtue of education is innovation...]

[In the microscopic world of quantum entanglement, certainty is a thing of the past; in the macroscopic future constructed by algorithms, what is the role of the university? ...]

In just thirty seconds.

A speech draft, rich in quotes, rigorously logical, and brilliantly written, was fully displayed on the screen.

Principal Hao's eyes widened, and he leaned forward involuntarily.

As a scholar, he could tell the value of this article at a glance. This was definitely not the kind of garbage pieced together by a search engine; the reflections on educational philosophy within it were even more profound than his own thoughts.

"This..." Principal Hao pointed at the screen, his fingers trembling slightly. "It wrote this?"

"It's not over yet."

Chen Zhi continued to issue commands. "Moss, turn this speech into a virtual video of Principal Hao delivering it. Set the background at Weiming Lake."

The screen flashed.

A lifelike "Principal Hao" appeared on the screen against the backdrop of the sparkling Weiming Lake. He began to speak, his voice and intonation imitated to perfection!

The lip-sync was perfectly matched, and the facial expressions were vivid and natural.

If the real person wasn't sitting right there, Principal Hao himself would have suspected that he had been secretly filmed at some point.

"This is what we are doing."

Chen Zhi closed the laptop and looked at Principal Hao with burning eyes. "This is the prototype of Artificial General Intelligence. It can understand, think, and create. We are teaching it to understand the world."

"And that power consumption is the heat generated when it thinks. We are trading electricity for the key to unlock the future."

Principal Hao took a deep breath, took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and put them back on.

The expression on his face was unprecedentedly solemn.

Peking University has always been a pioneer of the new.

He knew better than anyone what it would mean if this technology were born at Peking University.

"You guys made this?"

"We did." Chen Zhi nodded. "The core architecture was built by me and Senior Dai, and it's currently just an infant version."

"An infant version?!"

Hao Ping gasped.

If this was an infant, then what were those so-called AI unicorns on the market? Paramecia?

"That's why our power consumption is so high."

Chen Zhi took the opportunity to play the sympathy card. "Principal, this child eats too much. We're in that little lab, running dozens of cards until they smoke. The cooling can't keep up, and the machines could blow at any time. Senior Dai takes a sauna in there every day; he's lost a whole size."

Dai Damai nodded cooperatively next to him, looking aggrieved.

Hao Ping slammed his hand on the desk.

"This is absurd!"

This roar gave Dai Damai another jump.

"How can a project of this magnitude be conducted in such an environment?!"

Hao Ping stood up and paced back and forth in the office, his face flushed with excitement.

"This is a pillar of the nation! A technology that can change the global landscape, and you're actually doing it in a tiny cubicle in the incubation base?"

"It's absolute nonsense!"

He turned around and pointed at Chen Zhi and Dai Damai.

"What do you need? Speak! As long as the university has it, I'll give it all to you!"

The corners of Chen Zhi's mouth curled up slightly.

That was exactly what he had been waiting for.

"Well..." Chen Zhi rubbed his hands together. "First is the venue. That little cubicle is really too cramped to work in, and the power capacity isn't enough."

"Done!" Hao Ping waved his hand grandly. "The first basement level of Science Building No. 1. That's the former backup server room for the supercomputing center. It has independent industrial circuits and precision air conditioning. Three hundred square meters. Is that enough?"

Dai Damai's eyes instantly went round.

Three hundred square meters! An independent server room! Precision air conditioning!

"It's enough! More than enough!" Dai Damai was so excited he almost kowtowed to the principal.

"And computing power." Chen Zhi continued to ask for the moon. "We only have a few hundred A100s right now, which is a drop in the bucket for training a large model. Can the university provide some support?"

Hao Ping pondered for a moment.

"The university's funding has its processes, and large-scale hardware procurement takes time."

"However..." Hao Ping gritted his teeth. "I can grant special approval to allocate some of the idle computing resources from the School of EECS and the Mathematics Center for your use. In addition, I will apply to the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology for special support funds to officially establish your project!"

"And people."

Chen Zhi struck while the iron was hot. "We need talent. A lot of interdisciplinary talent—math, physics, neuroscience..."

"That's easy!"

Hao Ping smiled. "At Peking University, talent is the last thing we lack. I'll give you a green light, allowing you to recruit interns from across the whole university, and it can even count for academic credits. Master's and doctoral students can join your research group as long as their supervisors agree!"

This combination of punches completely dazzled Dai Damai.

Venue, computing power, funding, talent.

The problems that had plagued them for a month were all solved in an instant.

This was the benefit of having a big tree to lean on for shade!

"However, I have one condition."

Hao Ping calmed down and looked at the two of them.

"Please say it."

"This project must stay at Peking University," Hao Ping said, his gaze intense. "The core technology must remain in the hands of our own people. I don't want to see the news in a couple of days saying that this project has been bought out by foreign capital."

Chen Zhi stood up and nodded earnestly.

"Rest assured, Principal."

"Deep Space Technology will always be a Chinese enterprise."

Hearing the answer he wanted, Hao Ping nodded in satisfaction.

"As long as the university has it, just ask."

"Our Peking University is here to support young people like you who dare to dream and dare to act!"

Both daily updates will probably be in the evening from now on.