"Is Mr. Meng not considering joining Baidu at all?" Robin Li's expression fluctuated for a moment, but it was almost unnoticeable. "I think I should be the CEO who values AI technology the most in the country. We at Baidu are also the current ones in the country. The company that invests the most.”
"Do you already have your favorite place? Or do you have very high requirements for the conditions? We can discuss the specific situation later. Isn't it too hasty to skip this link directly?" Li Yanhong was looking for talents at this time. Still very sincere.
"I don't have any doubts about Mr. Li's sincerity or financial resources. I heard Alex say that Mr. Li's bid last year was definitely the most powerful among all." This was actually a bluff. Alex naturally wouldn't say it to outsiders. This kind of detail, to Robin Li's ears, definitely greatly increased the credibility of his words.
"Although no specific details were mentioned, he said that if it were not for Teacher Hinton's back injury, they would actually like to add Baidu." This was actually revealed in Hinton's own interview later. Meng Fanqi used two details, It seems that he is already very familiar with Hinton's team and has gained a certain amount of initiative.
"Have you already contacted the people from Google Brain?" Li Yanhong was still angry when he thought about last year's bidding. This matter was really unlucky.
Originally, Baidu's first offer of tens of millions of dollars had almost impressed Hinton. Hinton, who had taught all his life, had never seen such a large amount of money before, and he immediately verbally expressed his intention.
As a result, before the formal signing was finalized, his two students stopped their mentor and came up with an idea. The three of them set up a shell company and let technology giants bid and hire them through acquisitions.
This comes and goes, and the delay gives Google time and space to operate.
In the final bidding, Li Yanhong obviously did not lose, but the other three people preferred Google. Seeing that Google's bid was already higher than my own psychological price, I decided on the result directly.
If you do things like this, why bid? Why should you just talk to Google directly?
Although the whiteness on the surface was always decent in that incident, Robin Li was still a little unhappy in his heart.
When Google won Hinton's team, it was a first-come-first-served basis, but now Yanjing has an outstanding undergraduate student, and the school is right next to his Baidu headquarters.
Li Yanhong felt that this was the fate of fate and the reincarnation of heaven.
Canada is close to your United States, but is Yanjing still close to your United States?
Therefore, Li Yanhong drove here for the meeting today and was in a good mood.
But I didn't expect that even after a few words of conversation, the situation and trend would be the same as last year.
"Google Brain has indeed sent me a letter of intent, and the conditions are quite favorable." Meng Fanqi told him frankly, "To be honest, I have basically decided to join, so I said I would skip the recruitment part in order to save Mr. Li's time. "
"Meng Meng, no matter what conditions Google offers you, you can take their contract and come directly to Baidu to work." Robin Li recalled the situation last year, stopped bidding back and forth, and directly gave a capped condition.
"No matter what price you can negotiate with Google, I will pay 20% more." Robin Li said word by word with a heavy expression.
Last year, the Hinton team failed to win more than 40 million U.S. dollars. This year, for this undergraduate student, it is impossible for Google to pay a higher price.
Although Li Yanhong said it doesn't matter how much it is, he actually has a psychological bottom line. As long as it doesn't exceed his asking price last year, he can accept it.
Meng Fanqi laughed to himself after hearing this. If he was really courageous, he would not care about other people's bids and directly quote a price. That would be called confidence.
You have to get other offers before you can ask for a price. No matter how you listen to it, it sounds like it lacks pricing power.
How much is it worth, and you can’t even count it? You also need to look at other people’s bids.
But since Meng Fanqi didn't plan to join, he didn't think much about it.
"Mr. Li, of course money is important, but it cannot be said to be everything. Google and I have not completely negotiated the price. The current price they have offered me is probably tens of thousands of dollars."
"I have many other factors that I care about, such as academic studies. You may also know that I took a break from school, but taking a break is not an option. I have to find a university like Stanford to study."
"Of course, these are actually my personal matters and are considered trivial matters. The more important thing is whether the current situation and atmosphere in China are really suitable for the development of the most cutting-edge AI technology."
Although Meng Fanqi has the advantage of being reborn, an elder said it well.
People don’t know, they can’t predict.
A person's destiny, of course, depends on self-struggle, but the process of history must also be taken into consideration.
"Is the atmosphere in China suitable for the development of cutting-edge AI technology? How can I say this?" Robin Li is also on the road to pioneering, and this matter is naturally something he is very concerned about.
"Mr. Li is the only person who is willing to come to me personally at this time, so I will tell you a few words from the bottom of my heart." Meng Fanqi reviewed the overall development of AI and said, "AlexNet and my DreamNet Now that the door to deep learning has been completely opened, it can be predicted that in a short period of time, there will be a huge breakthrough in the performance of AI models in various directions and fields."
"Yes, now is the time to compete for speed. If you take one step faster, you will get faster every step." Li Yanhong nodded in agreement, confirming this premise.
"Technical indicators are one thing. Looking at the overall trend, if you want to really implement AI technology and make it available to everyone, it is nothing more than making the model bigger or smaller."
"Make it bigger or make it smaller...? Do you mean the two development directions of terminal or cloud?" Li Yanhong quickly followed Meng Fanqi's thinking.
"Yes, during academic research, we will not pay too much attention to the parameter size of the model and its calculation loss at first. But when it is actually put into use, we will inevitably separate small models that are extremely optimized and reduced, and open interfaces that emphasize performance. A large model of the cloud for human use.”
“In the early days, the structure and design of the model may be modified and adjusted repeatedly to make the model as fast and as good as possible. But over time, with the accumulation of data, filtering, higher-quality annotation, and most importantly, , a larger number of model parameters.”
"Extremely large-scale models will completely change qualitatively at a certain critical point, making most small models lose their value. Especially language and speech and image generation models. Their use experience cannot be improved."
Meng Fanqi recalled that before his rebirth, Mr. Li faced with ChatGPT (version 3.5) and GPT-4 and resisted the pressure to launch the large model Wen Xinyiyan early, and had to sigh in his heart.
In fact, Wen Xinyiyan is not without merit, but if this kind of intelligent model for interacting with people pales in comparison, it will appear particularly vulnerable.
