On the evening of December 16, SenseTime released the obituary of company founder Tang Xiaoou on the public account: "With an extremely heavy heart, we announce a sad news to everyone: our beloved founder, artificial intelligence scientist, Pujiang Tang Xiaoou, director of the laboratory, director of the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, left us forever at 23:45 on December 15, 2023 due to ineffective treatment for his illness."
"Colin's branches and leaves are gone in three springs, and the sea of learning is drying up in one night." An industry insider who was not familiar with Tang Xiaoou quoted an adapted poem to express his regret.
Shocked and deplored, many people from academia and industry expressed similar emotions to the reporter of "Daily Economic News". "I express my deep heartache and regret. Mr. Tang is an influential professor who is usually humorous and approachable. He is also full of national sentiment and strategic vision." said an insider of SenseTime who did not want to be named.
According to SenseTime's 2023 interim report, 's ultimate holding company is Amind Inc. (registered in the Cayman Islands), and the group's ultimate controlling shareholder is 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. His company mission of 'Insist on originality and let artificial intelligence lead human progress' will inspire all SenseTimes A person bravely climbs to the top to complete his unfinished business." SenseTime wrote in its obituary.
The AI leader with lots of talents
According to the prospectus of SenseTime, SenseTime was co-founded by scientists and practitioners in the field of artificial intelligence such as Tang Xiaoou, Xu Li, Wang Xiaogang, and Xu Bing. Among them, Tang Xiaoou is responsible for designing the company's research and innovation strategy, as well as promoting the company's cooperation with connected universities and academic institutions to establish research partnerships; Xu Li is responsible for the company's long-term strategy, business development and daily operations.
In short, Tang Xiaoou is responsible for research and Xu Li is responsible for operation. With the close cooperation of entrepreneurial partners such as Tang Xiaoou and Xu Li, SenseTime has successfully become the first among the “Four AI Little Dragons” in China.
In the obituary, SenseTime stated that Professor Tang Xiaoou is an outstanding representative in the field of artificial intelligence in my country. He is knowledgeable, rigorous in scholarship, truth-seeking and pragmatic, pioneering and innovative, full of family and country sentiments and strategic vision. He is willing to serve as a ladder for others, to encourage young students, to innovate, and to shoulder important responsibilities. He devotes all his energy to computer science research, actively promotes the development of original technologies, and has made outstanding contributions to the development of science and technology in the field of artificial intelligence in my country. He has carefully cultivated students for more than 20 years, and their students are famous all over the world. They will inherit the spirit and ideas of Professor Tang Xiaoou and move forward courageously on the road to developing artificial intelligence.
What kind of spiritual concepts and feelings does Tang Xiaoou have? His speech at the SenseTime 2022 Annual Conference may give people an idea. At that time, Tang Xiaoou said: "All our efforts today are for the next generation. The difficulties we encounter are getting bigger year by year, but the opportunities in front of us are also getting more and more year by year. We are solving these difficulties, and we are also In order for the next generation not to encounter these difficulties, the world will be fair in the end. If these things are not so difficult, why is it our turn?"
"Daily Economic News" reporter once visited the Shanghai headquarters of SenseTime Technology , whose "black sheep" culture is impressive. Tang Xiaoou once said that Shangtang's culture is more like the culture of sheep, and it is the black sheep among the sheep, "Be a blacksheep. Dare to be different. Dare to be different and dare to innovate." He also showed a photo of a zebra sheep using artificial intelligence technology to "create something out of nothing" and said humorously: "AI is to create things that don't exist yet."
Tang Xiaoou’s contribution is not limited to SenseTime Technology. It not only cultivates a large number of talents for the AI industry, but also actively promotes AI to empower various industries. Tang Xiaoou delivered a speech titled "Artificial Intelligence, Big Love (AI) Boundless" at the 2018 World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
He said: "AI needs to cooperate with traditional industries. This relationship is combination and empowerment, not subversion. The value of AI is to help traditional industries improve production efficiency and liberate productivity."
Tang Xiaoou gave a speech to China's AI industry Having cultivated a large number of talents, he also attaches great importance to AI education in the field of basic education. It is reported that SenseTime has teamed up with East China Normal University and the Commercial Press to release the world's first artificial intelligence high school textbook "Basics of Artificial Intelligence (High School Edition)".
In addition, Tang Xiaoou also advocated that the development of artificial intelligence requires the wisdom of the world, and global companies and institutions should strengthen cooperation to open up the national boundaries of AI academic research. This is another meaning of "big love (AI) has no boundaries".
It is a pity that this AI leader suddenly left when the field of AI was turbulent.
A staff member of an AI company also expressed his sorrow for the death of Tang Xiaoou. He told the reporter of "Daily Economic News": "I just saw the news. I was shocked. I am really jealous of the talented people! Teacher Tang's contribution to China In terms of artificial intelligence, he not only founded the leading AI company SenseTime, but also cultivated many technical talents for the AI industry and promoted the progress of China's original artificial intelligence technology. Some colleagues in our company also posted this news and were shocked. And regrettable."
Shangtang is entering an "extremely critical period of development"
In Shangtang, Tang Xiaoou is the core figure.
In 2014, Tang Xiaoou co-founded SenseTime with his student Xu Li and others. Xu Li is currently the CEO and Chairman of SenseTime Technology. Regarding the founding team, SenseTime stated this in its prospectus: "Over the years, they have attracted top scientists, engineers and business talents, leading the company to develop from a team focused on scientific research to a leading artificial intelligence company that has achieved commercial success. ."
During the short-selling crisis half a month ago, short-selling institutions questioned that SenseTime insiders and major shareholders, including Tang Xiaoou, were eager to sell their stocks and cash out. In response to this, SenseTime responded in the announcement that the company’s executive director and controlling shareholder Tang Xiaoou has not sold the company’s shares he actually holds since the company’s listing, and promised not to reduce his holdings within two years from December 30, 2022.
When SenseTime's 2023 semi-annual report was released, Xu Li said: "In this half-year, SenseTime has ushered in an extremely critical period of development. Our 'Daily New' large model system and large AI device SenseCore have brought With outstanding performance, we seized the new opportunities brought by technological breakthroughs and released the first large language model in China with comprehensive capabilities that surpassed GPT-3.5-turbo, allowing our generative AI-related revenue to achieve a year-on-year growth of 670.4%. We hope Bringing stronger large model capabilities to the industry and helping our users create disruptive products in the era of generative AI."
In terms of performance, in the first half of 2023, SenseTime achieved revenue of 1.433 billion yuan, year-on-year An increase of 1.3%; net loss was 3.142 billion yuan, narrowed year-on-year; adjusted net loss was 2.393 billion yuan. Among the four major business segments of
, the smart business segment achieved revenue of 854 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 50.2%, and still maintained steady growth; the second largest source of income, the smart life segment, achieved revenue of 312 million yuan in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 6.7% ; while the smart city and smart car business experienced a significant decline. Among them, the smart city segment’s revenue was 184 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 57.7%; the smart car segment’s revenue was 84 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 30.5%.
But at the same time, in the era of large models, SenseTime is indeed embracing new market opportunities.
In 2023, SenseTime launched the "RiRiXin" large model system and the large AI device SenseCore, and released a series of generative AI products based on the "RiRiXin" large model, including "SenseChat", "SenseMirage" and "Ru Shadow SenseAvatar" and so on.
's semi-annual report shows that in the first half of the year, SenseTime's generative AI-related revenue increased by 670.4% year-on-year, and its contribution to the group's business increased from 10.4% in 2022 to 20.3%.
Regarding Tang Xiaoou's sudden death, Pan Helin, co-director and researcher of the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center of Zhejiang University International Business School, said in an interview with a reporter from the "Daily Economic News": "Professor Tang's main achievement is through DeepID The algorithm has increased the face recognition accuracy to 99.55%, and its students are also talented people, such as He Kaiming, who invented the deep residual network. Therefore, Professor Tang is not only the leader of SenseTime, but also the founder and pioneer of China's AI technology. Today, there are a large number of artificial intelligence talents in China. Although the passing of Professor Tang is regrettable, it will not hinder the development of SenseTime's technology and business."
Chairman of Xingxing AI, founder of Shunfu Capital, AI of the Industrial Culture Development Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Li Mingshun, executive leader of the application working group, said that it is a pity and regret that Tang Xiaoou, chairman of SenseTime, passed away! He is the predecessor and important promoter of the previous generation of AI industry applications, and is also a typical representative of scientists starting AI! Their efforts have achieved remarkable results, but at the same time they also have huge regrets. Especially in terms of AI commercialization, the previous generation of "AI Little Dragons" all had huge problems in breaking the situation. Especially in the era of large AI models, the technical base is gradually being equalized. The barriers created by the previous generation of AI companies are likely to be overtaken by the new generation of technology, but the advantage is that all the previous accumulation and experience will allow the new generation of AI entrepreneurs to have more lessons learned and accumulated experience, and the new generation of AI driven by scenarios will Application entrepreneurs will inevitably have successors who will inherit the legacy and expectations of their predecessors and push the AI upgrade in all walks of life in China to a new level!
Daily Economic News
Keywords:EDITOR_DEFINED-SenseTime,EDITOR_DEFINED-AI,EDITOR_DEFINED-Large Model,CONCEPT-Artificial Intelligence
