No open source frameworks allowed

Lin Yuan found a restroom and took out clothes from his bag to change his attire.

His interview was at 1:30 PM, and he still had an hour, which was enough time.

Lin Yuan, having changed his clothes, walked along the tree-lined path of Zijin Aviation School. He no longer felt out of place with the atmosphere here, and he yearned for his life after enrolling.

There would be no disgusting bosses, no annoying work. Only the free wind blowing and the beautiful fragrance of youth.

Before long, Lin Yuan arrived at the battlefield where he would realize his dream—the graduate school interview location.

This was a building belonging to the Computer Science Department. A glass door in a hallway on the third floor was tightly shut, with signs related to the graduate interview posted on it.

The interviewees had already arrived early and were waiting. Some looked confident, chatting and laughing, but most were as anxious as Lin Yuan.

For most ordinary people, a prestigious school like Zijin Aviation School was a watershed moment in life. Entering meant basking in glory, while leaving meant returning to the mundane.

Most of the people present were busy typing away on their computers. Lin Yuan glanced around, seeing nothing but endless lines of code.

Lin Yuan immediately felt a headache coming on; what he feared most was project demonstrations.

Relying on his computing power system, he studied desperately, expending tremendous effort, and finally, within half a year, met the interview score requirement for Zijin University. He had no energy left to work on any research projects.

Lin Yuan recalled his alma mater; forget about a computer laboratory, let alone an AI computing power center. Hands-on computer practice at his alma mater involved typing away on a bunch of old, antiquated computers, whose computing power couldn't even see the tail lights of a cybercafé machine equipped with a GTX graphics card.

What was there to talk about computing power? It would be good if it didn't freeze and give you a blue screen.

As for the software algorithm level, that was even more of a mess.

His alma mater simply did not offer AI-related courses. AI-related majors are currently only offered at prestigious universities; his alma mater's computer courses still taught outdated technology. Otherwise, Lin Yuan wouldn't have been stuck with only CRUD jobs after graduation.

Due to the atmosphere at the scene, Lin Yuan had no choice but to bite the bullet and take out his treasure from his backpack—a used ThinkPad T440.

He had bought it online previously to write code. This machine would have been a king ten years ago. But looking at it now, it was truly an antique.

The machine was equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce 720M graphics card designed specifically for mobile platforms, with 1GB of video memory. It basically couldn't run the training of any current AI framework.

These current AI frameworks are all designed to be massive in size; graphics cards with less than 6GB of video memory are basically sidelined.

This graphics card couldn't even be used for mining, because mining also has minimum requirements for video memory.

Therefore, this graphics card was as good as non-existent.

When Lin Yuan occasionally designed AI training, he could only choose the most helpless option—running it on the CPU.

In the field of AI computing, the CPU is a junior compared to the GPU.

But given Lin Yuan's current predicament, he didn't have spare money to buy a top-tier graphics card.

Fortunately, he still had the computing power system.

When complex calculations were needed, Lin Yuan could invoke the computing power system to consume computing power and complete the calculations.

However, the computing power system could not be invoked frequently because it would have side effects.

The side effect was: feeling weak! Feeling like his body was drained.

Every time he consumed a large amount of computing power, Lin Yuan would collapse powerlessly onto his bed. It was similar to the state after a floor full of tissues.

Ever since he had the computing power system, Lin Yuan had even quit his bad habits. Because his body simply couldn't take it anymore.

Lin Yuan held his antique machine while trying to strike up conversations with the people around him.

"Classmate, what project is this of yours?"

"Oh, this is my financial big data analysis..."

"Mine is facial recognition..."

"Mine is an AI intelligent dialogue system, similar to ChatGPT..."

Lin Yuan looked at his laptop screen with some helplessness; his project seemed a bit low-tech. His project was outdated OCR character recognition, which involved teaching a computer to recognize handwritten characters.

This was an open-source project he downloaded from GitHub, and then he refactored all the code himself.

Due to the lack of energy caused by exam preparation and the computing power limitations of this antique machine, this was already the limit of what Lin Yuan could achieve.

He dared not over-exhaust the computing power system, fearing he might overheat and burn out his brain.

It was too late to do anything now.

Lin Yuan could only adjust his mindset and try his best to face the upcoming challenge.

—

An hour finally passed, and the glass door opened from the inside. Staff led the group of candidates into a conference hall.

Lin Yuan sat down nervously, his gaze falling upon five or six people seated at the podium.

Once everyone was seated,

a person who looked like a host announced, "Hello, everyone. First, thank you all for choosing to apply to our Computer Science Department at Zijin Aviation School. I believe you have all read the admissions brochure. This year, we are recruiting two classes, a total of 60 students.

There are 113 people present here today, and you are just one batch. Yesterday, a batch of students already participated in interviews, and there will be another batch tomorrow and the day after. So, the spots are limited, and the competition is very fierce."

At this point, various low-voiced discussions had already erupted in the conference hall. The content was nothing but laments about the cruelty of the competition.

If there were over a hundred people in each of the four batches, that meant over four hundred people competing for 60 spots.

These over four hundred people had all passed the written exam score threshold. They were truly the best of the best, so it was no wonder that everyone present gasped.

"Those of you who are well-informed should already know about this year's assessment changes..."

Lin Yuan was startled, because he clearly belonged to the uninformed category.

The host's words continued, "Due to the rise of AI, the school is responding to the national call and vigorously promoting AI education reform. Therefore, the assessment method will no longer be simply an interview and a review of your past projects.

Because AI is a comprehensive subject that tests both theoretical knowledge and practical ability.

So, we will give out questions on the spot.

Students who are behind on the news don't need to be discouraged, and well-informed students don't need to be complacent.

Because you won't be able to find similar exam questions from existing question banks.

Or rather, our exam questions are everywhere."

Lin Yuan chewed on the other party's words—neither similar, yet everywhere. That was interesting.

Then the host pointed a remote control at the large screen behind him, "The question is very simple, it's the simplest OCR character recognition."

After saying that, the host deliberately paused and said nothing more.

Lin Yuan was first delighted, because his practice project happened to be OCR character recognition. Was this divine favor? But then his instinct told him that this matter was definitely not simple.

The host waited for everyone to discuss for a while before continuing, "You all think it's very simple, right?"

Lin Yuan even saw the smile on the host's lips from a distance, a smile that carried the benevolence of a martial arts master looking at his juniors.

Then the host said blandly, "No open-source frameworks are allowed."

As soon as these words were uttered, it was like throwing a stone into a calm lake; the conference hall erupted into chaos.

Lin Yuan, however, suddenly understood—damn it, they were waiting for him here.