Chapter 40 A tough nut to crack
"Mom," Pei Song flipped through his mother's old collection of paintings, "you used to paint really well."
"Yes," Pei's mother gently stroked the yellowed sketchbook, "At that time, my biggest dream was to go to an art college. Every time I saw your photos in Country D, I was very envious."
She turned to the last page of the album, which was an unfinished oil painting.
"This is a work I prepared for school application many years ago," Pei's mother said, "and I never touched a paintbrush again after that."
Pei Song looked at his mother's slightly sad eyes and suddenly had an idea: "Mom, why don't you reapply to the school?"
"Ah? No, no, no!" Mother Pei waved her hands repeatedly, "I'm already this old!"
Pei Song was very excited: "Mom, which school did you want to apply to back then?"
"I want to study art history at M University." Pei's mother said, her eyes lit up. "When I was learning to paint, I loved studying art history the most."
"M University?" Pei Song was stunned.
"Yes," Pei's mother laughed, "That's why I urged you to apply to M University when you were preparing to study abroad."
Pei Song took out his cell phone and sent a message to Shi Yanchen.
Soon, Shi Yanchen replied: "I contacted the tutors of the art history major at M University and asked them to give my aunt some guidance."
The next day, Shi Yanchen came to visit Pei's mother in person.
"Auntie," he handed over a stack of materials, "This is a detailed introduction to the art history major at M University, as well as some exam questions from previous years."
Mother Pei took the information, her eyes reddened: "I'm sorry to trouble you."
"It's my duty." Shi Yanchen said, "If you need any help, please let me know at any time."
Seeing his mother studying the materials carefully, Pei Song felt at ease. This was a brand new beginning.
A few days later, Pei's mother received an email from Country D.
He is a professor in the Department of Art History at M University. He introduced the major in detail and expressed his willingness to give her some remote guidance.
"This was contacted by Shi Yanchen, right?" Mother Pei looked at Pei Song.
Pei Song nodded: "He said you wanted to study art history and happened to know a teacher there."
Mother Pei was silent for a while, then said softly: "He is a good boy."
At this time in the Pei family, Grandma Pei was still denouncing her daughter-in-law for being "heartless".
"Look, what a mess the house has become since this woman left?" she said to Pei's father, "Now is the time when we need the Zhang family's help, why are you still hesitating here?"
Father Pei sat in the study, staring at the family portrait on the table in a daze.
In the photo, the three of them are smiling so warmly.
Thinking about it now, those good times can never be returned.
When Pei Song came to pack up his mother's remaining things, he saw his father's haggard appearance and felt mixed emotions.
Some damage, once done, can never be undone.
"Dad," Pei Song stood at the door of the study, "Have you really thought it through?"
Father Pei didn't say anything, but just buried his face in his hands.
…
"Future Hotel?" Pei Song took the project book handed over by Zhou Feng. He was not surprised because Zhou Feng had mentioned it to him before.
This is SNK's key project in the Asia-Pacific region, and it plans to build a fully intelligent high-end hotel.
From room control to catering services, the most advanced AI technology will be used.
"Considering the success of the Jin Shang Xuan project, the company decided to let you participate in this project." Zhou Feng said, "But the technical level is more complicated, so I let Liu Yan partner with you."
Liu Yan sat aside, with a faint smile on his face: "Welcome Manager Pei to join us, we will definitely cooperate well."
At the next division of labor meeting, Liu Yan volunteered to be responsible for supplier docking: "I think we should let experienced people handle this."
But when it came time to assign the tasks, he assigned the most difficult intelligent system supplier to Pei Song.
"This company's technology is very cutting-edge," Liu Yan said with a smile, "it's just right for newcomers to learn."
Pei Song soon realized how difficult this "learning opportunity" was.
The first docking meeting was a disaster.
It was an online video conference. Pei Song prepared the plan carefully, but was interrupted directly by the other party's technical director.
"Excuse me, we are discussing a project involving a complex deep learning system." The director pushed his glasses and said, "Let me ask you a basic concept. Do you know the difference between TensorFlow and PyTorch?"
"This..." Pei Song was speechless for a moment.
"That's what I said," the director sneered and said to his colleague next to him, "SNK sent someone who doesn't even understand the deep learning framework. Isn't that too much of a disregard for us?"
"If we don't know anything about the field of AI, then what can we talk about the neural network structure and parameter training scheme?"
Pei Song tried to maintain a professional smile: "I will study the relevant knowledge as soon as possible..."
"It's not a question of whether to learn or not." The director interrupted him directly, "Do you know the complexity of the algorithms involved in this project? The intelligent voice interaction system alone has to handle multi-modal input, and also consider noise elimination and voice separation. The backend has to schedule more than a dozen deep models. Do you think an outsider can understand all this?"
"Assign us a professional technical contact person." The director said and hung up the video.
Pei Song spent a week cramming the basics and finally made an appointment with the other party, but was ridiculed because of the pronunciation of a term.
"If you can't even pronounce LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory Network) correctly, don't waste everyone's time here."
Pei Song suppressed his anger: "I understand the concept, it's just the English abbreviation..."
"Understand?" The director said as if he had heard a joke. "Then what are the functions of the forget gate and the input gate? What is the activation function of the output gate?"
Dense professional terms came like bullets, and Pei Song could only awkwardly admit that he still needed to learn.
For the third meeting, he made a PPT of more than 100 pages overnight and converted all the project requirements into technical documents.
"To be honest, the content is well thought out." The director said slowly, "But if you look at this system architecture diagram, the data flow is all wrong. The distributed training module is directly connected to the inference service? Isn't this a dead end?"
He zoomed in on a page of the PPT: "And here, you use the Naive Bayes classifier to process multimodal data? How dare you use such an algorithm that is ten years old?"
Every word was like a slap in the face. Pei Song clenched his fists, his nails digging deeply into his palms.
"I suggest that SNK find someone who knows the business to take charge," the director said at last, "otherwise the whole project will be ruined by you."
When Pei Song returned to the office, he saw Liu Yan leaning against the door with a half-smile on his face.
"How was it? Did you enjoy chatting with the experts?" Liu Yan said with a smile, "I advise you to admit defeat. Not everyone can chew such a hard bone."
Pei Song ignored his ridicule and turned on his computer to continue studying technical documents.
That night, he received an email from the other party, which directly copied the meeting minutes to Zhou Feng:
"Given that the professional level of the contact personnel sent by your company is seriously insufficient, it is recommended to replace them, otherwise we will re-evaluate whether to continue cooperation."
Pei Song stared at the email, his hands shaking slightly.