Harvest time, troubles come

Lin Yuan miscalculated again.

He had anticipated that Good Group's reputation would turn around, but he hadn't expected it to be so fierce and so fast.

According to Lin Yuan's previous assumptions, capital, in order to profit, would definitely be willing to spend some money. So, this time, delivery riderss' treatment would certainly improve.

But to save on investment, it's estimated that they wouldn't increase delivery riderss' salaries too much. Because in the current economic climate, for a labor-intensive service industry like food delivery to still have a 5% annual income growth is already a rare achievement.

If it were a 10% increase, that would simply be a living Buddha.

Because the consumer base for the food delivery industry is the general public; after all, even wealthy people only have one mouth. Therefore, the income of the food delivery industry is strongly correlated with the wallets of the general public.

So when Good Group announced a 15-20% salary increase, Lin Yuan simply couldn't believe it.

Lin Yuan could barely believe that the process optimization brought by the food delivery algorithm could reduce delivery management costs by 20%. But he didn't believe that Good Group would be willing to completely hand over this part of the profit to the delivery riderss.

And the subsequent surge in Good Group's stock price completely dispelled Lin Yuan's doubts.

What does it mean to have "greater ambitions"? Clearly, this was it.

The benefits brought by reduced delivery costs are long-term and slow, a steady stream. But the gains in the stock market are drastic and rapid.

Lin Yuan wasn't without the thought that capital would use every means to push up stock prices, but he still underestimated capital's determination to pursue profits.

For a time, all media outlets were filled with: "Good Group Boosts Employment, delivery riderss See Universal 20% Salary Increase."

Initially, it was just commercial advertisements, but later, Good Group's presence even appeared in public service announcements.

The reason is simple: after the public sector organized various experts and scholars to conduct in-depth research based on the food delivery industry in Zijin City, they concluded that Good Group's food delivery algorithm 2.0, improved with modern AI technology, conservatively reduced delivery costs by about 16%.

For a labor-intensive industry, reducing labor costs by even two or three percentage points is something to boast about, let alone over 10%, without exploiting the practitioners.

Because what is the actual GDP growth rate in a year?

Therefore, the public sector made an exception and allowed Good Group to appear in public service advertisements.

After all, for the sake of employment nowadays, it has come to the point of encouraging college students to engage in domestic services. Good Group's achievement in this regard is truly outstanding.

Especially since Good Group fully passed on the profits from this to the delivery riderss, it was a strong shot in the arm for social employment.

As for Good Group's reckless behavior in the capital market, the public sector turned a blind eye.

The public sector had long anticipated and become accustomed to this; the stock market bubble of internet companies wasn't new, which is why the public sector allowed these internet companies to list on international financial markets.

In short, Big A in the local market is good enough; let's not have a bunch of things that are even more deceptive than Big A. (Of course, there are some that aren't deceptive, but overall, they are.)

As this storm from Good Group swept through the southeast of Dragon Country, its stock price in HK also rose by about 40%. For its trillion-dollar market capitalization, this was truly an earth-shattering event.

But Lin Yuan knew clearly that this stock price was too inflated.

Because Good Group had no significant actual business growth.

For a large internet company like Good Group, although the food delivery business accounts for a large proportion, the cost of the food delivery business is not solely delivery costs. To put it bluntly, delivery cost is just one link among many.

Even if a 20% reduction in delivery segment costs was entirely monopolized by Good Group, the overall revenue increase for its entire group would likely still be in the single digits.

Therefore, this approximately 30% surge is completely unreasonable, clearly another real-world example of an irrational stock market.

In Lin Yuan's view, the stock market's irrationality was largely due to Good Group leveraging the public sector's influence.

Lin Yuan hadn't thought such an operation was possible before; he thought Good Group would at most just be commercially boasting. He never imagined it could even combine with the policy level.

Good Group perfectly utilized the public sector's desire to improve employment, especially the urgent need to improve employment for the middle and lower classes.

At this point, Lin Yuan even wondered: Was Zhang Yan's master, Director Wang, eyeing this very point, which is why he got involved? Because this clearly aligns perfectly with the current ZZZQ.

Seeing this situation, Lin Yuan gradually began to liquidate his positions.

In a word, Good Group had no actual business growth, and its current stock price was inflated by hype.

Lin Yuan had cleared one-third of his Good Group shares when the price rose by 20%, another third at 30%, and then, when it reached 40% today, he only kept the initial one-sixth.

Although he couldn't sell all at the peak, he wasn't bothered by earning less. Only after experiencing the madness of the stock market does one understand that "restraining greed" is the only way to survive in the stock market.

Lin Yuan did not use the computing power system to help him with stock trading this time, not because he didn't want to, but because the computing power system had previously been trained on a short-selling model and couldn't handle this long-position situation.

He had considered having the system train a long-position model for this situation, but the system seemed to have learned its lesson. It simply replied: "Task pending..."

Because Lin Yuan had used the excuse of publishing SCI papers to complete system tasks, he had tricked the system into creating a short-term sniper model targeting Good Group.

But now he had earned the money from stock trading, but the SCI paper hadn't been published yet.

Although Lin Yuan found excuses like: "System, my paper isn't perfect yet, can you help me train another model...?"

But this time, the system ignored Lin Yuan. Lin Yuan didn't know if this was a system setting or if the system itself had truly learned its lesson.

However, even if the system didn't cooperate further, Lin Yuan's bank account already had 7 million in cash, and his stock account still had about 1.5 million in unrealized stock value.

Now he finally had money.

The first thing Lin Yuan did after getting money was to force his parents to accept his help in buying them retirement and medical insurance.

But then he tragically discovered: he couldn't buy it out in one go now; he could only pay for 15 years consecutively.

He had no choice but to give up. Never mind, he decided to give his parents some money every month from now on.

And Lin Yuan's worldview continued to be refreshed.

Because Good Group also created a wave of buzz in the tech circle—"AI Powers Intelligent Manufacturing Upgrade."

How could such a typical case of AI enhancing productivity escape the attention of the tech world?

For a time, various seminars, both official and corporate, were widely reported in the media.

Experts and scholars took to the stage, with various process reviews and future outlooks.

There were also all sorts of comments from the public online.

Positive comments: Our country has finally taken the lead in the field of AI application. While The Other Shore is still trying to use AI for human-computer dialogue, our country has already applied AI in the physical industry.

Negative comments: First, let you taste some sweetness; anyway, when it's time to harvest later, all they need to do is move their fingers and change a few parameters.

Lin Yuan's life, however, remained as calm as ever.

That's right, even though Good Group's momentum was immense this time, he, as the true source, remained hidden behind the scenes, unknown to anyone.

Although he himself didn't want to show off, Good Group had no intention of giving him the chance to do so.

Lin Yuan originally planned to continue lying low. He also knew that Good Group would definitely not let him take credit for the algorithm. He only wanted to seize this opportunity to ask Good Group for more money.

However, Lin Yuan ultimately underestimated capital's bottom line.

He had thought that as Good Group failed to replicate the food delivery algorithm, they would naturally increase his salary and offer him a long-term contract similar to a technology license.

But Good Group didn't want to keep this "rebel" long-term.

More accurately, Good Group was resentful of Lin Yuan's uncooperativeness—his consistent refusal to provide a reproduction of the food delivery algorithm.

After getting the opportunity, Good Group finally made its move.