You were supposed to have a fake marriage with the diva, so how did you become her father?

Chapter 483 The Future of AI

The meeting room door closed precisely at 1 p.m. the next day.

Lu Ran sat at one end of the long table, with an open laptop in front of him.

Zhou Mingzhe sat to his right, while the empty seat on his left was reserved for Lao Feng.

Old Wang sat by the window, Zhao Yiming sat next to him, and Chen Mo sat near the door, holding a freshly brewed cup of tea.

Old Feng was the last to come in, closed the door behind him, and sat down next to Lu Ran.

Lu Ran did not begin his speech.

He projected his computer screen directly onto the large screen in the conference room.

The screen displays a short piece of code, less than a hundred lines long.

But the architecture is clean and concise, with more comments than code, and each line explains what the logic is doing.

Zhao Yiming had already reviewed it yesterday, but when he sat here today and saw that piece of code on the screen again, his expression was still very tense.

He's not someone who hasn't seen good code; his own code is considered top-notch in the industry.

But what he was seeing was completely unrelated to his understanding of "good code"—it wasn't optimizing the existing solution anymore; it was something that had descended from another dimension.

There are too many geniuses, but in Zhao Yiming's view, genius is just the threshold to meeting Lu Ran.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that they are on par with von Neumann and Turing.

But now is not just a time for lamenting.

Many people asked questions during the process.

Old Wang leaned closer to the screen for two minutes, then asked, "This logic... it's not matching keywords, is it?"

"No," Lu Ran said, "it's understanding semantics."

The meeting room fell silent; everyone seemed to be discussing these matters.

Old Wang frowned slightly and leaned back: "You mean, it can read a passage and understand what it's saying?"

"It's not just about knowing." Lu Ran typed a command on the keyboard.

A dialog box popped up on the screen, and he typed a sentence in it: "Design a login interface that includes a username input box, a password input box, a verification code area, and a confirmation button. The style should refer to the common design guidelines for modern mobile products, with a gentle, bluish color scheme."

He pressed Enter.

The screen remained silent for about three seconds.

Then the code started popping out line by line.

It's not some poorly made template code; it's a complete, commented, and clearly structured front-end page generation logic.

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are generated simultaneously, and a page preview appears synchronously on the right side of the screen—a clean login interface with a blue and white color scheme, rounded corners in the input boxes, hover effects for the buttons, and a simple refresh logic embedded in the verification code area.

The entire process, from inputting the command to outputting the finished product, takes less than fifteen seconds.

The people present were all industry leaders, but they all found the generated effect incredible.

Old Wang's mouth hung open in astonishment. After a long while, he finally managed to ask, "This... it wrote it itself?"

"right."

Did you not specify the layout parameters in your command?

"No. It understands what 'interchange design guidelines' mean on its own, and decides where the input box should be placed, how big it should be, and what color it should be."

Old Wang fell silent.

He stared at the automatically generated login screen for a while, then turned to look at Zhao Yiming.

Zhao Yiming returned his look with a "I had the same expression yesterday" look.

Chen Mo put down his teacup. He was the least skilled person there, but after watching the demonstration, he could roughly imagine what it meant.

"Mr. Lu, you told me before about 'a technical route that can greatly improve the efficiency of game developers'—is this something like this?"

"This is just a small part. It's the most basic application scenario in the natural language processing module. There are many modules in the entire AI system that are much more powerful than this. The capabilities of computer vision are even more outrageous, but I haven't shown you that yet."

Zhou Mingzhe spoke, his pace slower than usual: "If this technology could be applied to game development—code generation, art asset generation, numerical balance simulation, user behavior prediction—the efficiency of each step would increase several times over. It's not an improvement, it's a change in the logic of doing things."

"What about in other industries?" Old Feng asked.

He comes from a product background, so his understanding of technical principles is not as deep as Lao Wang's and Zhao Yiming's, but his thinking has always been based on scenarios.

"E-commerce, logistics, finance, healthcare, education, government public services... If each industry can adapt its own version of this system, then it's no longer just a tool for the gaming industry; it's a tool for the entire society."

Lu Ran nodded in satisfaction at Lao Feng.

Old Feng's words hit the nail on the head.

He stood up, walked to the whiteboard, picked up a pen, drew a large circle on it, and then wrote two words inside the circle—"AI".

"Nobody in China is doing this right now. And nobody abroad is either. It's not that nobody's thought of this path; it's just that the technical barriers are too high, so high that most companies don't even have the qualifications to get started. The system we have now is more complete than any publicly available research institution." He turned to face the crowd. "So, TUTU Technology's main task going forward is only one thing—to transform the AI ​​engine from our current runnable demo state into a commercially viable platform."

Zhou Mingzhe asked a very specific question: "How do you plan to export it? Open source? Licensing? Or building your own cloud service platform?"

"A cloud service platform. We'll create a standardized interface that allows other companies to access our AI capabilities via API. They don't need to build their own frameworks, train their own models, or buy their own servers; they simply need to call our interface to use these tools. The pricing model can be flexible, either monthly or per call."

Chen Mo leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers lightly on the table twice: "Technically, this direction is fine. But there's one problem—once this is made public, Tencent will definitely follow suit. Their technological reserves and R&D investment are far greater than ours. If they also take this path, it will be difficult for us to maintain our leading edge."

"It will take them time to catch up," Zhao Yiming interjected. "I didn't mention it earlier, but I spent all of yesterday looking at that code. Its underlying logic is different from all the publicly available machine learning frameworks on the market. It's not built on the TensorFlow or PyTorch system; it's a completely independent technical approach. If Tencent wants to replicate it, they have to understand this logic from scratch. From understanding to reproduction to productization, it will take at least three to five years. We currently have a one- to two-year window. If we can build up the platform and ecosystem during this time, we'll be firmly established by the time they catch up."

After hearing Zhao Yiming's words, Old Feng's expression turned somewhat serious: "Then let me ask a more specific question. Who wrote this set of materials? Was it entirely written by you alone?"

When the question was raised in the meeting room, the air was silent for a moment.

Everyone was waiting for Lu Ran's answer.

They knew Lu Ran was capable of writing the code for a complete game independently, but that was one thing.

The sheer size and complexity of an AI engine are on a completely different level. The idea of ​​one person writing an entire AI system sounds unbelievable.

Lu Ran did not evade the question. "I was the one who took the things out."

He said, "But I didn't write it all by myself. I used some... unconventional methods to speed up the process. I'm not going to go into the specifics of how I did it, because you wouldn't believe me anyway. You just need to know one thing—this system is so complete and usable that it's ready for commercial use. Not a demo, but a product."

Lu Ran certainly wouldn't go into the details. Everyone has their own secrets, and Lu Ran didn't need to explain. Let them figure it out themselves.

But when he said "unconventional methods," the people in the meeting room exchanged glances, but no one pressed for details.

Old Wang was the first to relax.

He leaned back in his chair, picked up his glass, and took a sip of water. "Fine. Anyway, the way you always pull things out is weird; we're used to it. Just don't tell me this thing was conjured up with magic."

"More reliable than magic. Magic requires incantations, but this doesn't."

Someone in the conference room chuckled.

That laugh was like a small stone thrown into a calm lake, loosening the tension in everyone's hearts.

During this period, although they trusted TUTU, they were actually on edge the whole time.

After learning about it today, I finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Chen Mo picked up his teacup again and took a sip of the now half-cold tea: "Then the next question is—should we inform the authorities about this beforehand?"

Lu Ran was prepared for this problem.

"Yes. And I'm already doing it. I discussed Director Zhao's investment earlier than expected, partly to pave the way for today. AI is such a sensitive topic. If TUTU were to work on it in isolation and only notify the authorities after it's grown significantly, their attitude would definitely be 'stop and accept scrutiny first.' But if we let them know what we're doing from the beginning, and involve them as shareholders and partners, their attitude will be completely different."

Old Feng chimed in, "So you want the government to invest not only in TUTU's shares, but also in priority access to the AI ​​engine?"

"Yes. It's not free. It's about getting priority access in exchange for policy support and resource allocation. They use our AI technology to upgrade government IT systems, transform public services intelligently, and improve efficiency in certain sensitive areas. We receive policy support and compliance benefits. It's a positive cycle."

Chen Mo thought for a moment and then asked, "What about Tencent?"

"I've been thinking about Tencent's situation," Lu Ran said, walking back to his seat. "Shanda and NetEase's blockade is a short-term tactical suppression. Once the AI ​​engine starts exporting its capabilities, those blocked channels will come knocking on our door again. Shanda isn't stupid; when they see their competitors using AI technology to improve efficiency, they won't stay tied to Tencent just to save face. It will be much easier to divide them then than it is now."

"What about Tencent's own payment and social ecosystem?" Chen Mo continued, "They control the two biggest entry points: WeChat login and WeChat Wallet. Even if we gain an advantage in AI, as long as they block these entry points, users still can't get in."

"So they chose the most difficult place to attack—the login portal. The weakest link in all our products is the login portal. But this strategy has a problem: blocking the login portal comes at the cost of a poor player experience. If players experience slow logins, disconnections, or can't log in at all, they blame Tencent, not TUTU. Public opinion has already shifted in our favor, and this trend will continue to grow. When players' tolerance for WeChat login drops to zero, Tencent's card will become useless."

Lu Ran paused here, picked up his water glass, took a sip—the water was completely cold—but didn't frown. After finishing, he put the glass down and continued, "Furthermore, in the internet industry, entry points are most easily changed by technology and policy. Tencent's current WeChat login is essentially because users have no better choice. If one day another entry point better meets users' needs, even if it's just more efficient in a certain scenario, users will switch to it. Entry points can change."

When he finished speaking, he glanced around at everyone present.

Zhou Mingzhe's expression had changed from the seriousness of the morning to the relaxed look of "we can do it now."

Old Wang was still looking at the code on the screen, but his fingers had already moved off the desktop.

Zhao Yiming had already started drawing architecture diagrams in his notebook, the pen tip making a scratching sound on the paper.

Old Feng leaned back in his chair, his hands folded in front of him, his expression calm, as if his last bit of worry had disappeared.

Chen Mo held the teacup but didn't drink it; the smile on his lips was a little wider than before.

Lu Ran mentally reviewed the states of these people and felt that it was about right.

He packed up his laptop and stood up: "That's all for today. After the meeting, everyone can take some time to process this. Zhao Yiming, starting tomorrow, break down the core modules of the AI ​​engine into deployable sub-projects, prioritizing them. Lao Feng, compile a list of application scenarios for different industries; don't just daydream, find real-world case studies. Chen Mo, prepare a template for external cooperation, to use when contacting other companies later. Zhou, you oversee the overall progress."

Zhou Mingzhe asked, "What about JD.com? I heard they've been in talks with esports teams lately, and they seem quite interested in League of Legends. Should we take this opportunity to talk to them?"

"Furthermore, their e-commerce business has been severely squeezed out by Tencent. Isn't the enemy of my enemy my friend?"

"Let me think about how to discuss the JD.com matter first," Lu Ran said. "They are an entry point. But how to open that entry point needs to be figured out first."

After the meeting ended, Lu Ran returned to his office and sat down.

He didn't turn on the computer immediately, but leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a while.

Most of what he said at the meeting was aimed at his own goals.

He knows the technological potential of AI engines, but he is also exploring the depths of this path.

No matter how advanced the technology, it needs to be implemented. Implementation requires scenarios, and scenarios require partners. And each partner has their own agenda.

He picked up his phone and scrolled through his contacts, where he saw the contact person from JD.com that Chen Mo had mentioned before.

The contact name is listed as "JD.com eSports Business Contact Person," and the name is Zheng Kai. The job title is "Director of Innovation Business Department."

He hadn't met this person yet, but Chen Mo had mentioned that the other party had a strong desire to promote the e-sports team project internally and was already going through the process within JD.com.

Lu Ran did not contact Zheng Kai directly.

He put down his phone, stood up, walked to the window, and glanced at the street below.

He looked at it for a while, then turned around, went back to his desk, sat down, opened his computer, created a new document, and typed a line of text in the title: "Preliminary Framework for TUTU-JD Cooperation".

Originally, the plan was just for JD.com to sponsor a League of Legends team, but Lu Ran felt that simply sponsoring a team was too small a scope for cooperation, and that they could actually cooperate in multiple areas.

He then paused to consider his wording and wrote on the first line: "TUTU Technology can provide JD.com with AI-driven supply chain efficiency optimization solutions, increasing inventory turnover efficiency to several times the current level without increasing total costs. Specific figures will be provided after technical verification."

After finishing writing, he didn't continue. He saved the document first, then picked up his phone and sent Chen Mo a message: "At JD.com, could you arrange a meeting with Zheng Kai next week?"

Chen Mo replied instantly: "What are we talking about?"

"Let's not talk about specific collaborations yet. Let's chat about their esports team and find out if they're interested in AI."

"Understand."

Lu Ran put his phone back on the table, reopened the document, and added another line: "If JD.com is interested in AI technology, TUTU can provide a complete solution from supply chain management to user behavior analysis. In exchange, JD.com will provide TUTU with resources of equal magnitude in e-commerce traffic generation."

He closed his laptop, stood up, and walked around the office.

AI can do many things. But right now, the most important thing is only one thing—to show Tencent that TUTU is not just about League of Legends.

JD.com was the second target he was preparing to make.

...