Chapter 223: AI Super God: In Front of My Boss, I

February 12, the day before Xuyuan's semester began.

Returning students dragged suitcases along Xuelin Road; the chilly early spring wind rustled the sycamore leaves, and the early cherry blossoms by Pearl Lake clustered densely, appearing from afar like a crimson cloud.

A silver Bentley slowly approached from the direction of the faculty apartments, passed the sports field and the library, then headed toward the East Gate.

"That looks like Senior Chen Yansen!"

"Drop the 'looks like'! Besides the president and dean, he's the only one at our school who can drive a private car onto campus."

"By the way, I heard Orange Tech is hiring voice data annotators at ten yuan per hour, but my Mandarin only cleared Level 2B—I don't meet the 2A requirement."

"Are there many openings? I have a Level 1A Mandarin certificate—I want to try."

"Bro, who says you need Level 2A? As long as your dialect dictation skills are strong, you can still get hired."

Five or six students watched the Bentley's retreating silhouette and chattered among themselves.

At that moment, a freshman approached curiously: "Senior, sorry to bother you—where do I sign up? I'm looking for a part-time job too."

"Orange Tech's official website. You must first enter your Xuyuan student ID in your user profile before the application section appears," one of them replied.

"Thank you, Senior!" The freshman bowed repeatedly in gratitude.

Before Chen Yansen came to Xuyuan, most students' part-time options were limited to library assistant or cafeteria cleaner—low pay, fierce competition.

Positions were usually snapped up within the first week of freshman registration.

Those left behind had to become internet cafe attendants, deliver laundry, or hand out flyers in the city center, earning only 30–40 yuan per day and exhausting themselves for it.

But since Orange Tech and Pinbei appeared, even the poorest students could land an online customer service gig—sitting in an air-conditioned office, getting free fruit, snacks, and tea every day, easily earning 100 yuan.

That's why Chen Yansen lived quietly on campus.

First, many students hoped to work at Orange Tech or Pinbei after graduation—he was their future boss, so no one dared disturb him casually; second, they often saw him around campus, and after seeing him enough, he lost his novelty.

On the other side.

Chen Yansen arrived at Zhuxianzhuang Technology Park, parked his car, and stepped into Building 9.

"Good morning, Boss!" The tall, youthful receptionist called out sweetly.

Chen Yansen gave a slight nod and walked toward the elevator.

"Good morning, Boss!" Zhou Chuangxi stood inside the elevator, about to press the close button, then saw the big boss approaching and quickly pressed open.

"Morning, Lao Zhou! By the way, did you sync the speech database from iFlytek?"

Chen Yansen replied absently.

Before Yuxi officially launched, it needed massive speech data collected and precisely annotated by humans, combined with deep learning algorithms, to develop advanced acoustic and language models.

Thus improving Yuxi's speech recognition accuracy!

Generally, acquiring speech data had four methods: first, user-authorized collection; second, professional recording collection, mostly paid;

third, free public speech data covering multiple languages, dialects, and speech scenarios; fourth, data sharing.

Chen Yansen chose the fourth method; through Tao Jingwen's introduction, Orange Tech partnered with iFlytek—the speech data generated by Orange phone users would be shared between both parties.

Orange Tech saved massive funds and time; iFlytek could enrich its own speech database in the process.

"Boss, it's done—but about 30% of the speech data hasn't been manually annotated yet, so it's still raw data," Zhou Chuangxi replied with a nervous laugh.

He'd been employed for only two weeks but was already used to Chen Yansen's way of addressing him.

As a top student from Huazhong University of Science and Technology's gifted program and a PhD in electrical engineering from UIUC, he specialized in computer vision, image processing, and speech recognition.

To him, Chen Yansen calling him "Lao Zhou" felt oddly warm.

Originally, they'd only spoken for half an hour via video interview, yet Zhou Chuangxi had immediately decided to return to China and join Orange Tech to build an AI speech large model.

"HR is helping you hire data annotators. Next week, Daniel Povey from Microsoft will join. I'm entrusting the AI Lab to both of you—hope to see the product launch soon," Chen Yansen said, patting Zhou Chuangxi's shoulder.

One was twenty, the other thirty-one, yet Zhou Chuangxi, the UIUC electrical engineering PhD, behaved like a humble student before Chen Yansen.

The core reason: first, Chen Yansen paid too much—100, 00 yuan monthly salary, plus 100, 00 stock options in Orange Tech, vesting over four years, with extra equity rewards for performance—totaling over 4 million yuan annually.

Second, when he learned Yuxi's entire system architecture had been independently coded by Chen Yansen, he was stunned; after reviewing the code, he developed deep admiration for his new boss.

He knew that with Chen Yansen's programming skills, even in the United States, he'd be a super god in AI speech recognition.

Thus, Zhou Chuangxi, under the guise of working, seized every chance to discuss speech model optimization with Chen Yansen.

These days reminded him of his time studying at UIUC.

"Daniel Povey?" Zhou Chuangxi instinctively asked upon hearing his new colleague's name.

"You know him?" Chen Yansen asked, surprised.

At the time, Daniel had little fame in AI; his Kaldi speech recognition tool was still in early development, his most prestigious title merely a senior engineer at Microsoft Research.

"He gave a public lecture at UIUC—I remember him well. He's exceptionally skilled in speech recognition technology," Zhou Chuangxi praised without reservation.

At this time, Daniel had little name recognition in the AI field; the Kaldi speech recognition tool he was developing was still in its early stages, and his most prestigious title was merely a senior engineer at Microsoft Research.

"Boss, isn't he a professor at Johns Hopkins?" Zhou Chuangxi asked, puzzled.

"I told him Orange Tech's AI Lab would build a PB-scale storage system and a computing cluster with 600 GPUs—totaling 15 petaflops of computing power," Chen Yansen shrugged, honestly revealing why Daniel agreed to join.

15 petaflops meant 1. quadrillion floating-point operations per second.

Of course, it also helped that he possessed a "succubus-like" mental charisma—just a few words on the phone had secured one of AI's top future engineers.

Seven years later, he turned down Facebook's chief scientist position and a million-dollar salary.

Chen Yansen offered him only $22, 00 monthly—and Daniel eagerly accepted.

The 15-petaflop server was simply too tempting!

At the time, Johns Hopkins' speech processing center had barely 0. petaflops of total computing power.

"Boss, you're serious?" Zhou Chuangxi swallowed hard, disbelievingly confirming.

"What's serious or not? I had someone calculate it—it only costs 300 million yuan."

Chen Yansen shook his head, smiling dismissively.

"Ding!" The elevator doors slowly opened!

Zhou Chuangxi hurried after him: "Boss, that's 15 petaflops! Titan, the supercomputer in the United States, only has 17. petaflops."

Chen Yansen smiled faintly.

He silently sighed, marveling at how fast computing power was evolving.

Thirteen years later, NVIDIA released a supercomputer called Project Digits, offering 1 petaflop per second at just 21, 99 yuan.

In 2012, building a server with equivalent computing power—excluding electricity and maintenance—cost nearly 30 million yuan in hardware alone.

Zhou Chuangxi widened his eyes, mouth slightly open, finally understanding why Daniel, this British man, had come to China.

Just the 15-petaflop server alone could attract a flood of PhDs from Ivy League and Tsinghua-Peking universities.

In the United States, high-computing-power labs weren't rare—but given Zhou Chuangxi and Daniel's industry influence, even if they joined one, they'd merely be stepping stones; joining Orange Tech and fully owning a project was far more comfortable.

"Lao Zhou, the hardware for the computing cluster arrives this week. Pick the server room location yourself. Also, Telecom has set up a 4G experience point in the tech park—no need to worry about network issues," Chen Yansen added before entering his office.

"Got it, Boss. I'll get back to work," Zhou Chuangxi smiled happily and headed toward his desk.

As he walked, he marveled at Chen Yansen's local influence.

After all, this was 2012—China's three major carriers hadn't even received 4G licenses yet, yet Orange Tech was already enjoying 4G network access.

Chen Yansen pushed open the door, sat down heavily on the soft chair, and casually turned on his computer.

Compared to Sweden, Norway, Korea, and the United States, China's 4G network was still in its exploratory and construction phase in commercial applications.

He first checked the recent status of Pinbei, Orange Tech, KuaiPao, and YunSu, found no issues, then leisurely scrolled through news.

"February 11: China's first 4G experience point opened to Hangzhou citizens—average download speed reached 30 Mbps…"

Chen Yansen snorted. China's first 4G station was clearly in Zhuxianzhuang Technology Park.

But this was a special approval granted by Xu Zhenhui and Zhao Maolin—usable but not mentionable.

"Vipshop submitted its IPO application to the U. . Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday, expected to raise $125 million."

"The 'Thousand Group Battle' is deadlocked! Lashou, Nuomi, and Meituan stand in a three-way standoff; Dazhong Dianping, WoWoTuan, and QQ Tuan are hot on their heels!"

"Walmart announced it increased its stake in 1Dian to 51%, officially taking control!"

"Ma Liyun and Wang Jianlin made a 100-million-yuan bet: can e-commerce capture 50% of the retail market?"

"The food delivery war ignites! Ele. e can't match the 'Cross-River Dragon'—only 60% market share remains in Shanghai!"

Chen Yansen glanced casually—he felt the 2012 internet environment was far more prosperous than it would be a decade later.

Dozens of vertical e-commerce sites he'd never heard of were raising tens of millions in funding effortlessly.

This was truly a golden age for entrepreneurs!

As long as you dared to dream and could talk big, venture capitalists were genuinely willing to hand over cash!

Take Zhang Yiming's ByteDance—barely a concept, yet it secured 5 million yuan in funding based on a single PowerPoint.

Chen Yansen glanced casually and felt that the internet environment of 2012 was far more thriving than it would be over a decade later.

Ali was busy upgrading its B2C business and expanding payment scenarios using Zhifubao;

Baidu was optimizing its search algorithm and testing recommendations for nearby merchants, dining, and entertainment on Baidu Maps to drive traffic to group-buying sites and earn ad revenue and commissions;

Tencent was ramping up WeChat promotion, competing and cooperating with its own QQ, while announcing user numbers had surpassed 100 million.

Chen Yansen quietly recruited two AI tech giants from the United States and began developing a speech large model.

(End of Chapter)

Ali was busy upgrading its B2C business and using ZhiFuBao to continuously expand payment scenarios;

Baidu was busy optimizing its search engine algorithm and beginning to add nearby merchant recommendations, dining and entertainment options to Baidu Maps, diverting traffic to its group-buying site to earn advertising fees and commissions;

Tencent was busy intensifying WeChat promotion, engaging in a love-hate rivalry with its own QQ, while announcing that its total user base had surpassed one hundred million!

Chen Yansen quietly recruited two AI tech giants from the Lighthouse Nation and launched research into voice large models.

(End of Chapter)