"How is it possible for a machine to surpass such an interesting soul? ”Text: "Chinese Entrepreneur" reporter Li YanyanEdited by Zhao Jiankai
Header** SenseTime
It is with great sadness that we announce to you a sad news: our beloved founder, artificial intelligence scientist, director of Pujiang Laboratory, director of Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and professor of Chinese University of Hong Kong, Tang Xiaoou, has left us forever at 23:45 on December 15, 2023. At about 17 o'clock in the evening of December 16, SenseTime released an "obituary" on its official WeChat.
In the afternoon of the same day, "Chinese Entrepreneur" learned from a number of people familiar with the matter that Tang Xiaoou, the world's top scientist in the field of artificial intelligence and the founder of SenseTime, had passed away. According to Tencent News, Tang Xiaoou died in his sleep on December 15 at the age of 55.
Not long ago, there was news on the Internet that "Tang Xiaoou died by jumping off the building", in response, SenseTime insiders responded that false information, please do not spread rumors. An unnamed insider told China Entrepreneur that Tang Xiaoou has recently been busy with the work of the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and has been "in Shanghai".
When we met you, we had the best time. Shortly after the "Obituary" was issued, Xu Li, co-founder and CEO of SenseTime, posted a message of condolences in his personal circle of friends.
Seventeen years are like yesterday. Yang Fan, co-founder and vice president of SenseTime, also wrote an obituary with the text: Like countless good friends in the industry, Mr. Tang is the most important guide, leader, and supporter in my entire career, "I don't believe that it is really impossible to do original technology in China." "May we also see Chinese originality in heaven, and see the day when China's AI is becoming more and more leading and thriving.
After the news of Tang Xiaoou's death came out, the industry was shocked. An entrepreneur in the field of AI sighed, "It's a pity. On the news platform, netizens left messages of condolences. "God is jealous of talents! "His sudden death is a huge loss to China's AL (artificial intelligence) industry! "The fall of the superstar, the jealousy of the talent, the mourning. Before the obituary was issued, Shang Hailong, general manager of SenseTime Hong Kong, said on his personal social platform.
Tang Xiaoou's last public appearance was at the "2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference" held in Shanghai on July 6 this year. At the opening ceremony, Tang Xiaoou, as a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, introduced the latest progress of him and his team in the field of original innovation.
Tang Xiaoou has been engaged in research in the field of computer vision, is a world-renowned top scientist, face recognition technology "pioneer", Chinese artificial intelligence industry leader, once served as a doctoral supervisor of Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and director of the visual computing group of Microsoft Research Asia. SenseTime, of which Tang Xiaoou is the founder, is a well-known listed company in the field of artificial intelligence in Chinese and one of the "AI Four Tigers" in the industry.
Tang Xiaoou is also the "Teacher Tang" in the world, and he and a large number of students he has cultivated have greatly influenced the AI world and made many original contributions. He speaks wittily, without losing the innate sense of humor of Northeast people, and is "the first executioner in the AI industry". Previously, he talked about AI and Yu Qian's words, which are also a reflection of his own personality, "How can a machine surpass such an interesting soul?" ”
*: Screenshot of SenseTime WeChat*** The obituary said that Professor Tang Xiaoou is an outstanding representative in the field of artificial intelligence in China. He is knowledgeable, rigorous, pragmatic, pioneering and innovative, full of family and country feelings and strategic vision. He is willing to serve as a ladder for others, reward post-graduates, be determined to innovate, bravely shoulder heavy responsibilities, dedicate all his energy to computer science research, actively promote the development of original technology, and make outstanding contributions to the development of science and technology in the field of artificial intelligence in China. He has been cultivating students for more than 20 years.
The obituary also said: At this sad moment, we express our deepest condolences to the family of Professor Tang Xiaoou! Professor Tang Xiaoou's wisdom, enthusiasm and endless exploration of science will always inspire us to stay true to our original aspirations and forge ahead. The company's mission set by him, "Insist on originality, let artificial intelligence lead human progress", will inspire all SenseTime people to climb new heights and complete his unfinished business.
The obituary was signed as "SenseTime Technology Professor Tang Xiaoou's Funeral Working Group".
According to public information, Tang Xiaoou was born in Anshan, Liaoning Province, and serves as a professor of the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Hong Kong Chinese and a distinguished scholar of the School of Engineering.
Tang Xiaoou graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1990. The following year, he went to the United States for further study, where he received a master's degree from the University of Rochester, and in 1996 he pursued a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During this time, he came into contact with facial recognition algorithms and began research in the field of AI. Subsequently, Tang Xiaoou gradually established his position in the field of AI, especially face recognition technology, through one achievement after another.
After graduating with a Ph.D., Tang Xiaoou entered the Chinese University of Hong Kong to work. In 2001, he founded the multi-** laboratory of Chinese University of Hong Kong; From 2005 to 2007, Tang Xiaoou worked at Microsoft Research Asia as the director of the visual computing group. In 2008, he worked in the multi-level integrated technology research laboratory of Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology as director and researcher.
As the world's top scientist, Tang Xiaoou is a leader in Chinese's artificial intelligence industry.
In March 2014, Tang Xiaoou's team released the GaussianFace face recognition algorithm, which achieved an accuracy rate of 98 on the LFW database52%, the world's first breakthrough in human eye recognition ability, this algorithm made Tang Xiaoou's team famous. At that time, there had always been a bottleneck in the field of face recognition on how to improve the accuracy of algorithm recognitionThe accuracy rate of 53% was once considered the ceiling of the algorithm that could not be surpassed.
However, Tang Xiaoou improved the accuracy rate to 9852%, in the field of face recognition, can be said to have made history. Since June 2014, Tang Xiaoou's laboratory has published the DeepID series of algorithms, which has opened the era of face recognition technology application and industry landing, making China a world leader in this field.
In 2016, the Chinese artificial intelligence team led by Tang Xiaoou was selected as one of the world's top ten artificial intelligence pioneer laboratories, becoming the only selected laboratory in Asia. According to the data of the multi-**laboratory** of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in November 2023, Tang Xiaoou has published more than 400 articles**.
The Chinese artificial intelligence community has an interesting assessment of Tang Xiaoou: an outstanding talk show actor who has been delayed by his artificial intelligence career. On many public occasions, Tang Xiaoou's speech was full of fun. "It's my turn to speak, I'll first send a notice to the conference, today's lunch has been canceled, and afternoon tea has been changed, everyone is not in a hurry, listen slowly." ”
At the WAIC 2018 Artificial Intelligence Conference held in September 2018, Tang Xiaoou proved with his actions that while having strength, scientists who don't understand humor can't do artificial intelligence. "I told my son, don't believe in artificial intelligence, you are so handsome, you must talk about your girlfriend in person. ”
It is worth noting that on December 30, 2021, SenseTime, established by Tang Xiaoou's team, was listed on the Hong Kong stock market, and its market value once exceeded HK $300 billion since then. At present, SenseTime's business mainly covers four major sectors: smart business, smart city, smart life, and smart car. Tang is responsible for the design of SenseTime's research and innovation strategy, as well as driving collaborations with leading universities and academic institutions.
Tang Xiaoou is very opposed to the "wolf culture" that prevails in Internet companies: "One thing I still don't understand is why wolves eat grass? I actually think that the culture that I prefer more is one where we should live in peace, that we should treat each other well and cooperate for a win-win situation. He said that SenseTime advocates the "sheep" culture. What is Sheep Culture? "What we're advocating is that it's grass that eats and AI that squeezes out. Tang Xiaoou said with a smile.
Tang Xiaoou once said that in the field of artificial intelligence, the core competitiveness lies in the talent reserve. In the past 30 years of teaching career, Tang Xiaoou has indeed been all over the world, and he is the "Teacher Tang" that students love, respect and accompany all the way. He and a large number of students he has trained have greatly influenced the world of artificial intelligence and made many original contributions.
After graduating from MIT in 1996 with a Ph.D., Tang Xiaoou joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong and founded most of the leading laboratories in Hong Kong. It was this laboratory that became the "Whampoa Military Academy" for Tang Xiaoou to spread artificial intelligence knowledge, and where he brought out the founding team of SenseTime.
At CUHK, Tang Xiaoou met a young man - Xu Li. Xu Li, from Shanghai, was sent to the Department of Computer Science of Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2000 and was sent to graduate school four years later. Subsequently, he received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Hong Kong Chinese. Xu Li is currently the co-founder and CEO of SenseTime, and has published more than 40 articles in top international conferences and journals in the field of vision.
Among the co-founders who subsequently joined SenseTime, Wang Xiaogang graduated from the junior class of the University of Science and Technology of China; Xu Bing is also from most of the best laboratories in Hong Kong, he took Tang Xiaoou's computer vision course in his sophomore year, and then joined many ** laboratories; Then he was Yang Fan, who has worked at Microsoft Research Asia for many years.
Tang Xiaoou's last public appearance was at the "2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference" held in Shanghai on July 6 this year. At the opening ceremony, Tang Xiaoou, as a professor of Chinese University of Hong Kong, focused on the latest progress of him and his team in the field of original innovation, and shared in detail the stories of his three students, Wang Xiaogang, He Kaiming, and Lin Dahua, who pursued their dreams in the field of deep learning and Xi.
Looking back on history, Tang Xiaoou mentioned that the 2018 Turing Award was awarded to Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Yann Lecun, the three fathers of deep learning Xi, and the first doorbell was the epoch-making breakthrough in deep learning Xi speech recognition made by Jeffrey Hinton and Deng Li, a Chinese scholar at Microsoft, in 2011.
Later, in 2012, they also made an epoch-making breakthrough in the image recognition competition.
In the first few years of the Deep Learning Xi, what were Tang Xiaoou and his students doing? "We have 18 projects that have applied deep Xi to visual problems for the first time in the world, including face recognition, face detection, face reconstruction, object detection, human posture, image super-resolution, three-dimensional shape recognition and other core problems of computer vision. At the door of Deep Learning Xi, we rang the doorbell 18 times. Tang Xiaoou said.
Another work of Wang Xiaogang is to make the machine's face recognition surpass the human eye for the first time; He Kaiming developed a popular architecture in the field of computer vision, Deep Residual Networks (Resnets), which solved the problem of gradient transfer in deep networks and became the basis for large model series such as GPT. Lin Dahua led the initiation of OpenMMLAB, the most influential open source project of visual algorithms in the world.
Tang Xiaoou said: "I am very pleased that the big tree (Deep Xi) has begun to bear fruit. Just two weeks ago, our autonomous driving model stood out from 9,155 articles and won the Best of CVPR 2023 award. "According to Google Scholar statistics, this is the first international computer vision conference completed by Chinese scholars in more than 40 years of reform and opening up.
In addition, OpenMMLab was made by Dr. Chen Kai brought out by Lin Dahua, and Lu Chaochao, the author of another article on face recognition that surpassed the human eye made by Tang Xiaoou's lab, also returned to Shanghai after graduating from Cambridge University with a doctorate, and is cooperating with Mr. Yao Chizhi, the only Turing Award winner in China, to engage in basic theoretical research on AI at the Shanghai Chizhi Research Institute.
A new generation of students has made a successful start in Shanghai. Tang Xiaoou couldn't help but sigh.
He continued: "As a Northeast Chinese working in Shanghai, I would like to thank Shanghai once again and say 'Shanghai, hello', and I would like to say to Wang Xiaogang, He Kaiming, Lin Dahua, Chen Kai, Lu Chaochao, as well as all the students and teachers I have worked with, as well as friends in Shanghai today: 'I didn't meet you at the best time, but I met you, and I had the best time.'" ’”
*: This sentence of SenseTime comes from a classic line in Yu Qian's movie "Good Teacher". "This sentence is very beautiful, poetic, and it also comes from my heart," Tang Xiaoou said, "Every night before going to bed, I listen to Mr. Yu Qian's cross talk and think: 'How can a machine surpass such an interesting soul?' I don't believe it. ’”
The business is unfinished, and the Si people are far away. Teacher Tang, go all the way!