Gu Shiming’s eyes blazed as he fixed them on Wei Hongsi. “What are you planning to do?”
Wei Hongsi laid out his plan. “I want to intercept one or two of the most representative segments from Plan B and run a ‘de-rendering’ simulation analysis on them.”
Qian Jiayu nodded. “If your speculation can be confirmed, it would be a big help to the company.”
A faint smile crept onto Gu Shiming’s lips. “Since Director Qian agrees too, we might as well do this thoroughly.”
Qian Jiayu said, “President Gu wants to completely restore Plan B? That’s necessary, but it’ll take a lot of time.”
“We can do it in two steps.” Gu Shiming mused, “First, run a ‘de-rendering’ simulation analysis on Plan B. The results can handle the inspection team’s inquiries. Then, add enough manpower to restore Plan B.”
Qian Jiayu said, “That’s a good approach.”
Wei Hongsi couldn’t help but feel a bit surprised.
He had originally planned to verify his speculation first, then consider further actions. Coming to report to Gu Shiming was mainly to get authorization to use the CMS.
He hadn’t expected these two to have far more aggressive ideas than his own, and it seemed they intended to work alongside him on this.
But it made sense.
The original footage of Plan B itself was problematic. Whether Plan B was entirely produced by the CMS made a huge difference for Zhiwei Technology.
To give a rough analogy: In the first scenario, the CMS was like a precision machining tool—a criminal used it to turn a crude firearm (the original footage) into a weapon with higher accuracy and longer range (Plan B).
In the second scenario, the CMS became the weapon’s manufacturer—the criminal directly obtained the tool of crime from it.
Although Zhiwei Technology would still bear responsibility for inadequate oversight, from a legal standpoint, the duty of care in the latter scenario was far greater than in the former. With a smaller duty, the corresponding liability also shrank.
This distinction wasn’t much use in the game with Paradise, but when dealing with official investigations, it could very well sway the final conclusion.
One of the critical tasks in the rectification led by Gu Shiming, with Qian Jiayu assisting, was handling the investigations and inquiries from industry regulators and the police.
Right away, Gu Shiming called Yu Sheng over as well. The four of them held a small meeting in the office, discussing the modeling plan for the “de-rendering simulation analysis.”
Wei Hongsi had initially planned to use a frame-by-frame restoration method to process about five seconds of video footage. The workload wasn’t too heavy, estimated to take around three hours to complete.
But now, with the need to process the entire Plan B, that crude approach was naturally out of the question.
The modeling concept was led by Gu Shiming. Gu, Qian, and Yu all came from technical backgrounds, so handling this kind of work was second nature to them.
Although Wei Hongsi’s work experience lagged behind and he wasn’t yet very familiar with the CMS’s operating mechanisms, his solid foundational skills made up for it. With guidance from Gu Shiming, he managed to keep up with the other three’s pace.
Gu Shiming used his own permissions to create a project group, allowing everyone to communicate and coordinate work through the WD platform. Relatively speaking, this internal office system had better confidentiality.
The new model was temporarily named WD-IR alpha 1.0, and the project group was called IR1.
Its sole purpose was to run a de-rendering simulation analysis on Plan B, yielding simulated eye-tracking data for Plan B before it was rendered by the CMS.
But Gu Shiming reserved a pathway to upgrade this model later, making it the foundational tool for restoring Plan B’s original footage.
After about twenty minutes, the four settled on the plan and division of labor, then each went to their tasks.
Wei Hongsi returned to his workstation on the 16th floor. It was already past nine in the evening. Since joining the company, he’d never come in at this hour. He saw that at least half the desks in the open office area still had people sitting at them.
Though he’d long known that working overtime was a norm in tech companies—the term “corporate slave” wasn’t for nothing—seeing this scene still stirred a bit of emotion in him.
Seems like Supervisor He Feng not assigning him important work might not be a bad thing after all.
Wei Hongsi thought wryly, then turned on his computer and started working.
Half an hour later, his phone vibrated a few times on the desk.
He unlocked the screen and saw a message from his older brother: “I’m downstairs at your company. I brought what you asked for.”
“I’ll be right down.” Wei Hongsi replied, locked his computer, and took the elevator down.
By the pool in front of the main building’s entrance, Wei Hongbo was chatting with Wu Wenjun while smoking a cigarette.
When Wei Hongsi came over, Wu Wenjun said, “Wei Da, I’ll head up now. If you need anything, give me a call anytime.”
Wei Hongbo nodded. “Alright, Director Wu, please go ahead.”
Wu Wenjun greeted Wei Hongsi as well, then turned and went back inside.
“You’re smoking again. Aren’t you afraid my sister-in-law will scold you?” Wei Hongsi teased.
“Since when do you get to boss me around?” Wei Hongbo shot his younger brother a sidelong glance, then pulled a USB drive from his pocket. “All the ads Peng Jun made since joining Zihu Media are in there—three of them.”
Wei Hongsi took it. “Nothing from before that?”
“Couldn’t find any for now.” Wei Hongbo stubbed out his cigarette and tossed the butt into a trash can. “According to Shengyong’s investigation, after Peng Jun was fired from his previous company, he was unemployed for two months before going to Zihu Media.”
“Fired? What for?”
“From what Peng Jun’s former colleagues said, it was performance-related. Shengyong is looking into it further.”
“Oh.” Wei Hongsi nodded. “You met with our Director Meng?”
“We talked.” Wei Hongbo brushed it off without elaborating.
The information Meng Haolin could provide was pretty much the same as what was captured in the conference room surveillance footage. Besides that, it was just some details about how he and Li Yunxiang got along. That involved personal privacy, so naturally he couldn’t share it with his younger brother.
Wei Hongsi didn’t press further. He shook the USB drive in his hand. “If I find anything, I’ll message you.”
“Alright, I’m heading back to the bureau.” Wei Hongbo raised his arm and waved. A black sedan pulled up.
The driver was also from the criminal investigation detachment, dressed in plain clothes like Wei Hongbo. Wei Hongsi had seen him before but didn’t know his name.
Watching his older brother leave, Wei Hongsi turned and went back up to his workstation.
He plugged the USB drive into his computer. After the scan finished, he opened it and found three sets of ads.
After organizing his thoughts a bit, he switched to the school-enterprise cooperation project’s maintenance account and logged into the company system. He fed the three longest videos from the three ad sets into the sw-2 model on the central server for preprocessing.
Then he continued the earlier modeling work. Another hour or so passed before he finally completed the task at hand and submitted it to Gu Shiming through WD.
By then, the preprocessing of the three ad videos was finished. Wei Hongsi downloaded the data packages, sorted them by number, and sent a message in the IR1 project group’s discussion chat.
“@Gu Shiming (Cognitive Research Center-01) President Gu, the advertising creative designer who made Plan B is named Peng Jun. I obtained his three other ad works from this year through the police, and I plan to run a simulation analysis on them using the CMS.”
He didn’t know if Gu Shiming was up to date on the latest developments, so he explained in detail.