Chapter 64 Strolling Through the Exhibition Hall

Qiu Yan still looked somewhat drowsy, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he let out a wide yawn. "Dealing with jet lag is just miserable."

Deng Yonghua chuckled. "You have to force yourself to stick to local time to get over it as quickly as possible."

Pushing open the heavy glass doors of the hotel, a wave of damp, chilly air rushed to meet them. The rain outside had already stopped. The three of them walked through a few streets, the proportion of Chinese characters on the surrounding storefronts steadily increasing.

After about ten minutes of walking, Deng Yonghua stopped in front of a restaurant that looked like it had been around for quite a few years.

It was called "Old Place Cantonese Restaurant."

Through the display window hung gleaming, honey-glazed roast goose and barbecued pork, their tantalizing aromas faintly drifting out into the street.

"A colleague recommended this place when I was last here. The food is remarkably authentic, so I'm bringing you guys to try it today."

The moment they stepped inside, a smiling middle-aged woman walked up to them. Noticing the three of them had distinctly Chinese facial features, she asked with a slight accent in Mandarin, "What would you like to order?"

Familiar with the routine, Deng Yonghua rattled off an entire table of the establishment's signature dishes.

The food arrived promptly.

A heaping plate of Typhoon Shelter crab was piled high, the massive chunks of crab buried beneath a thick blanket of golden, crispy fried garlic. The rich fragrance drilled straight into their noses, and Qiu Yan, unable to restrain himself any longer, grabbed a piece and shoved it into his mouth, letting out a soft sigh of pure satisfaction.

The roast goose and barbecued pork were equally exceptional.

At the very least, it was vastly superior to the cafeteria food back in Hangzhou.

After thoroughly enjoying their hearty meal, the trio returned to the hotel.

On the eighth, Zhou Yun and Qiu Yan took a stroll down by the seaside and made a preliminary trip to scout out the conference center, just to avoid any awkwardness regarding not knowing where to go for the sessions. Before long, the ninth arrived.

It was also the first day of the conference.

In the early hours of the morning, just as dawn was breaking, Zhou Yun was jolted awake by his alarm clock. Outside the window, the sky was still a deep, inky blue.

Though still plagued by fatigue, the memory of Deng Yonghua's instructions from the previous night forced him to resist the heavy pull of sleep and begin washing up.

Deng Yonghua had explicitly told them the night before to rise early today.

The rush of warm water across his cheeks cleared his mind considerably. After finishing his routine, he selected a slightly more formal outfit.

The three of them converged in the hotel dining room. Even at this early hour, the restaurant was already packed with a great number of people eating breakfast—presumably scholars hailing from various countries around the globe.

Zhou Yun surmised they were all attendees of the NeurIPS conference.

Deng Yonghua hastily finished a few bites of his breakfast and urged, "We need to get going right away."

"Do we really have to go this early? Isn't today just the first day?"

"You'll understand once we get there."

Finishing their breakfast in a hurry, the three rushed toward the convention center. The straight-line distance between the hotel and the center was only a few hundred meters, eliminating any need to hail a taxi.

In under ten minutes, the three of them stood before the entrance of the convention center. A massive holographic projection of the Earth hovered above the grand lobby. Despite it being only eight o'clock in the morning, the venue was already bustling with crowds.

Deng Yonghua took one look at the throngs of people and let out a sigh. "We're still late. Let's go get registered first; I imagine the lines are going to be agonizingly long."

Taking the elevator together, the three joined the registration queue, which was already snaking along endlessly. By visual estimate, there were easily over a hundred people ahead of them.

After waiting for roughly an hour, they finally collected their badges—the credentials required for attendance—and officially entered the main venue halls.

The entire NeurIPS venue was divided into several distinct zones, and their immediate destination was the dedicated poster session area.

It was an exceptionally spacious and open hall. As far as the eye could see, rows of neatly arranged poster display boards stretched into the distance, though a significant portion of them remained bare, waiting to be filled.

Zhou Yun located his assigned spot, pulled out his poster, and pinned it securely to the board using small thumbtacks.

He had originally assumed that a conference of this caliber would be overwhelmingly formal. Only upon arrival did he realize it was far more relaxed than he had imagined—at least as far as this exhibition hall was concerned.

Some authors hadn't even bothered to prepare proper posters, merely sticking a single sticky note onto the board instead.

Furthermore, with so many empty display boards, it was likely that a fair number of participants hadn't even shown up.

Having finished putting up his poster, Zhou Yun had no intention of lingering in the area. Since he had an oral presentation scheduled later anyway, he didn't feel like repeatedly explaining his work to passersby over and over again.

Besides, he figured the content he wrote on his poster was already quite self-explanatory and accessible.

Consequently, the three of them began to wander through the exhibition hall. A crowd had already gathered around several of the display boards, where authors were actively presenting their research.

Suddenly, an exceptionally intriguing title caught his attention.

*Super-additive Cooperation in Language Model Agents*. The work primarily explored how simulating repeated interactions and inter-group competition could significantly enhance the cooperative capabilities of LLM agents.

Standing beside the poster was a remarkably young foreign man.

"Hey, are you interested in AI agents?" he asked, his voice carrying a classic American lilt.

With palpable excitement, he began introducing their work to Zhou Yun, gesturing wildly with his hands as he explained how the agents in their model managed to achieve such extraordinary cooperative prowess.

Zhou Yun listened attentively, nodding from time to time and posing several remarkably pointed and piercing questions along the way.

Every time, the young foreigner was left momentarily speechless by the depth of the inquiries, though he quickly managed to formulate a response.

Simultaneously, he found himself marveling at Zhou Yun's profound foundation in the field; after all, anyone capable of asking such questions had to possess a deep and rigorous understanding of AI research.

Once the introduction concluded, Zhou Yun smiled and asked in English, "This is genuinely fascinating work. By the way, are you a PhD student? You look quite young."

"Oh, thanks! Actually, I'm still just an undergraduate, a senior at MIT."

Hearing that the young man was from MIT came as no surprise. Given that he was a student at a top global institution, publishing a paper at NeurIPS during his senior year felt entirely reasonable.

Zhou Yun gave him a thumbs-up and, acting on a sudden impulse, asked, "Impressive. Are you planning to stay at MIT for graduate school?"

A look of genuine distress crossed the young man's face. "I haven't decided yet. Stanford and Oxford have both extended invitations, but my current advisor is pretty great, too."

Hearing this, Zhou Yun half-jokingly asked, "Have you ever considered coming to China? Our lab is always desperately in need of brilliant students like you, and the food in China will undoubtedly leave you mesmerized and begging for more."

The foreign youth clearly hadn't anticipated this pivot, yet rather than mocking the suggestion, he tilted his head and seriously pondered it for a moment.

"While I've heard that China's AI research strength is formidable, honestly, I really love my current research environment."

Zhou Yun was hardly surprised by the rejection. Anyone familiar with the current state of China's research environment understood the reality, and being able to encounter an advisor like Deng Yonghua was a stroke of luck akin to the ancestral graves smoking with auspicious smoke.

Besides, he wasn't some sort of scientific siren capable of swaying people to follow him with just a couple of sentences.

"Understood. Looking forward to our next meeting."

With that, the three of them continued strolling through the exhibition hall. After taking a brief, sweeping tour of the venue, he noticed a particularly striking phenomenon.

Fifty percent of the attendees present were ethnic Chinese.

No wonder a certain saying circulated within the United States: *"Our Chinese are better than the Chinese in China."*