If you cheat, money will follow

Korea.

Japan's targeted sanctions have caused the entire semiconductor industry in South Korea to not operate smoothly.

At this moment, South Korea has a profound understanding of its positioning and shortcomings in the industrial structure.

Unlike private demonstrations and the smashing of Japanese goods, the government has intensively carried out a lot of work.

The Korean government has formulated a strategy to "strengthen the competitiveness of materials, parts, and equipment."

It aims to stabilize the supply chain and reorganize the global value chain as quickly as possible, which is the Korean version of the domestic substitution plan.

They organize companies and institutions to research and develop restricted semiconductor materials.

Among them, SoulBrain is responsible for high-purity hydrogen fluoride;

Seoul Cologne Industrial began to introduce fluorinated polyimide mass production equipment from Europe;

SKC, a chemical company under SK Group, is improving its fluorinated polyimide production technology;

Dongjin Semiconductor, YOUNGCHANG Chemical, SK Materials and other companies have jointly tackled photoresist.

The South Korean government also plans to implement a strategic plan to diversify import sources for an additional 100 materials that are highly dependent on Japan, including Europe and North America.

It has invested US$18 billion and plans to replace it independently within three years.

"Boss, do you think these measures in South Korea will be effective?" Zeng Xi asked.

"It will have some effect, but it will be difficult to completely replace Japan." Chang Le shook his head and said:

"Japan has been deeply involved in the field of materials for decades, and it is not that easy to replace..."

"For example, for high-purity hydrogen fluoride, Japan can produce 12n grade (99.%, 12 nines)...

"After nearly 10 years of hard work, we have only reached the 10n level."

"South Korea lists 5n-level hydrogen fluoride as the top level. It's a joke."

"Japan's losses are not small. Japan's move inflicted 1000 losses on the enemy and 999 losses on itself, which is equivalent to losing both sides." Zeng Xi said.

The semiconductor upstream materials market is not large.

Taking hydrogen fluoride as an example, the global scale of high-purity hydrogen fluoride for semiconductors is US$5.15 million, with an annual growth rate of 5%.

Therefore, the scale is limited and the customers are limited.

To limit the other party is to limit yourself.

"I'm very curious about Japan's motivation for doing this. Is it really due to South Korea's capriciousness in dealing with issues left over from history?" Zeng Xi was very doubtful.

"Perhaps they want to show their goodwill to us and pave the way for future changes in the situation?" Chang Le said with a smile.

Despite successive rounds of sanctions in North America, China has not been greatly affected, but is increasingly prosperous.

Over time, it is possible that the landscape will change.

The chef returned to North America with an agreement on his intended goal.

I thought I would encounter a lot of criticism and doubts.

But I didn't want the North American officials to say a word except for the previous few congressmen who continued to remind the fruit not to play with fire.

Even the always flamboyant President remained silent when faced with the fruit's "enemies" behavior.

There seems to be an unusual meaning in this.

"Have you noticed who is the biggest beneficiary of Japan's sanctions against South Korea?" Chang Le said.

"We." Zeng Xi smiled and said:

"In just one month, the pre-sale orders for Changning Storage have exceeded 1000 million in Dongdong. This is an order from one channel."

"OLED panels, the market gaps left by Samsung and LG due to sanctions have all been eaten up by BOE."

The world's largest suppliers of OLED panels are Samsung and LG, and the third largest supplier is BOE.

"It's impossible for Japanese officials not to see such a result, but they did it anyway. There may be deeper considerations." Chang Le said:

“The first is to test the bottom line of North America;”

"The second is to let South Korea realize that they are not invincible in the semiconductor industry;"

"The third is to prepare the ground in advance."

Chang Le and Zeng Xi talked as they came to Pingtou Ge Research Institute.

Meet Liu Chaoyang at the AI ​​Building.

Liu Chaoyang introduced to the two of them:

"The large language model has been iterated to the fourth generation, and its parameters and performance have shown geometric leaps."

"The parameters have reached 100 trillion."

"The performance has been greatly improved, the interaction is very smooth and silky, the logical understanding ability is far better than that of the third generation, and input and output are no longer limited to text."

"Not limited to words?" Zeng Xi asked.

"Yes, for example, if you provide a landscape picture, it can generate corresponding speech, music and prose." Liu Chaoyang replied:

"Similarly, through voice keywords, it can quickly understand and generate the required pictures and music."

"Continue to iterate, and jobs such as copy editing, web front-end, and video production may disappear."

"If it is acceptable to just lose these jobs, it will involve social moral and ethical issues." Chang Le said.

"Yes, so we must be more cautious when introducing it to the market, otherwise it will cause unimaginable consequences and negative impacts." Liu Chaoyang said.

"Are you conscious? Are there any signs?" Chang Le asked.

"I heard from Li Fei that the current language model has always been within the understandable and acceptable range, and there are no signs of abnormality." Liu Chaoyang said.

"This is very strange. In the past, hundreds of billions of parameters could produce weak consciousness, but now it has reached 100 trillion parameters, but there is no consciousness." Chang Le said doubtfully.

"Li Fei and the others also found it strange." Liu Chaoyang said.

The three of them walked into the R&D center.

Li Fei, Hinton, Sutskvi, and Krichevsky were discussing, gesticulating with their hands while discussing, and they were very involved.

Only when Chang Le and the others came to their side did the four of them notice.

"Boss, Mr. Zeng, Dean Liu." The four of them signaled one after another.

"Hello, what are we discussing?" Chang Le asked.

Hinton introduced: "Boss, we are discussing consciousness."

"The so-called weak consciousness generated by the third-generation language model may not be real consciousness, but just some accidents, or a simple reproduction of some texts."

"Currently, the language model has been iterated to the fourth generation, and its performance has been greatly improved, but there is no sign of autonomous consciousness."

“We’ve also been having conversations with language models about philosophy, literature, emotion, and values.”

"Judging from the communication situation, it is still at a stage where it is understandable and acceptable."

“There is no escape from the category of human tools for some answers in terms of values.”

After Hinton finished speaking, Sutskvi continued:

"However, we do not rule out the possibility..."

"It may have further strengthened its previous awareness and learned to hide itself at a deeper level."

"It may be silently observing the entire world, including us."

Krichevsky has a different opinion: "I personally think the views are too alarmist."

"At present, although the parameter scale is huge, there is still a big gap in the level of consciousness produced by the series distance between them."

"And, since the model collapsed, we've been rebuilding, stepping in, and observing."

"It is undeniable that it has powerful capabilities in language understanding and processing, but in terms of logical thinking, it can only be considered a beginner."

"The teacher and I both agree that our initial awareness may have been our misjudgment, even though it was amazing enough."

"Well, I might be a little anxious," Sutskwe admits.

"Whether we were aware of it at the beginning or not, it is already in the past tense. We still have to continue to deepen and iterate according to the established plan." Chang Le said:

"You can keep your personal opinions, Li Fei, please demonstrate the current performance."

"Okay, boss." Li Fei nodded.