Chapter 211 - 159: Very Promising
The forty-five-minute presentation was quickly drawing to a close.
In the final few minutes, Professor Moitra turned to the audience and introduced several of the most pressing open-ended questions at the forefront of the field:
"First, how does the geometric complexity of the data manifold—for instance, the presence of holes or highly curved regions—impact the difficulty of model training?"
"Second, can we leverage these geometric insights to design more efficient optimizers? For example, an adaptive learning rate algorithm that can actively adjust to the geometric structure of the Loss Landscape."
"Third, from a geometric perspective, why is it that models with a larger number of parameters are often easier to optimize during training and more likely to find those flat minima that offer better generalization performance?"
After presenting these three questions, Professor Moitra brought the lecture to a crisp conclusion.
The audience once again erupted in thunderous applause.
"My current research is focused on the second question my advisor just mentioned."
Annie whispered to Chen Lin and Shen Yan, turning her head as she clapped enthusiastically. Her voice held a note of pride.
Hearing this, Chen Lin nodded thoughtfully and remarked casually, "Yes, that’s a very promising research direction."
Annie immediately rolled her eyes at him, a silent jab at how vapid his compliment sounded.
’Actually, Chen Lin’s remark was far from a casual, perfunctory platitude.’
Just a moment ago, when Professor Moitra posed the question about designing more efficient optimizers, several completely distinct yet theoretically viable research paths had instantly flooded Chen Lin’s mind, courtesy of his Little Mathematician title.
This was an extremely rare occurrence.
In the past, when faced with a specific mathematical problem, the system would typically only provide a single, optimal path to the solution.
But now, for several ideas to surface at once, it could only mean one thing: the problem itself held vast potential for exploration. Different research paths could all lead to optimal results in different application scenarios.
For a researcher, what did this signify?
It meant that this single topic could spawn several high-quality papers!
’And that wasn’t ’very promising’?’
However, Chen Lin didn’t say anything more. He had no intention of being a know-it-all and offering unsolicited advice on Annie’s research.
Annie was undeniably beautiful. Her face, which bore a striking resemblance to Daddario, was dangerously captivating to any normal man.
But Chen Lin had only just met her today; their relationship was far from close.
Moreover, during Schultz’s lecture that morning, he’d faintly sensed something. When the beautiful, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl first struck up a conversation with him, her gaze held a subtle, scrutinizing quality—even a hint of imperceptible condescension.
It was the subconscious sense of superiority that came with being an elite from one of the world’s top universities.
Annie probably didn’t mean any harm, and her attitude had done a complete one-eighty after she witnessed his conversation with Schultz. Still, that initial impression left Chen Lin feeling rather lukewarm toward her.
’They were passing acquaintances who had a pleasant chat. Nothing more.’
Just then, Annie seemed to remember something and made an enthusiastic suggestion. "Oh, right! Tonight, a group of students from the top universities are getting together for an informal networking event at the Quanji Hotel, the one the organizers arranged. We’re mostly going to discuss the presentations from today that we found interesting. Are you two interested in coming?"
Chen Lin shook his head without hesitation, offering a catch-all excuse. "I’ll have to pass. I need to buckle down and prepare for my presentation tomorrow afternoon. I probably won’t have time tonight."
Shen Yan, sharp as a tack, instantly caught the subtext in Chen Lin’s words and also politely declined. "I’d also like to get some rest tonight, so I’ll pass too."
Annie found this perfectly normal. It was common, after all, for presenters at an academic conference to sequester themselves to prepare beforehand.
She gave Chen Lin a supportive gesture and said with a brilliant smile, "Alright then, best of luck with your presentation tomorrow! My advisor and I will probably be there to listen, so you’d better be on your A-game!"
With that, she bid them a cheerful farewell and turned to walk off in another direction.
After parting ways with Annie, Chen Lin and Shen Yan first had lunch at the hotel’s buffet restaurant.
They spent the afternoon shuttling between different conference halls.
Chen Lin accompanied Shen Yan to two lectures that she had researched beforehand and was particularly interested in.
It wasn’t until evening that the two of them returned to the hotel.
After dinner at the restaurant, they went their separate ways back to their rooms.
「10:00 PM.」
Chen Lin sat at the desk in his luxury single room. He set down his pen and stared at the few sheets of scratch paper before him, which were covered front to back with writing. A hint of conflict flickered across his face.
It wasn’t that his research had hit a snag.
Quite the opposite. After a total of nearly six hours of high-intensity research over the past two nights, aided by his Little Mathematician title, he could clearly feel himself drawing closer and closer to a breakthrough: a brand-new algorithm that could be directly applied to all large generative models and significantly reduce their hallucination rates.
’Just give me two more hours... no, maybe not even two... and I’m pretty sure I can break through that final barrier!’
The problem was, he was out of time.
Chen Lin had long since figured out the limitations of his Little Mathematician title. Three hours a day was his absolute safe limit.
He’d already experienced the consequences of forcibly extending the duration to three and a half hours back in May, the first time he’d spent a long session explaining algorithms to Shen Yan. The result: he had fallen into a deep, unconscious sleep the next day that lasted nearly twenty hours.
His presentation was at 1:30 PM tomorrow.
He absolutely could not afford to screw up at a critical juncture like this.
A pang of regret washed over Chen Lin.
He was confident that his current research findings alone would be more than enough to make the trip worthwhile for everyone attending tomorrow, both in-person and online.
But to be unable to stand on such a prominent stage, in front of his peers from all over the world, and announce that he had discovered a new algorithm capable of changing the entire artificial intelligence industry... it just felt imperfect.
He gave a self-deprecating smile.
’It seems that even with the system, I can’t have everything be perfect.’
Shaking the chaotic thoughts from his mind, he carefully gathered the few pages of scratch paper he’d just written and placed them with yesterday’s stack before putting them all into a folder.
Then, yawning, he crawled into his soft bed.
A familiar wave of fatigue washed over him, and within five minutes, Chen Lin was sound asleep.