Tang Xiaoou passed away: the establishment of the Chinese Computer Vision Whampoa Military Academy is the chairman but also the teacher

On December 16, SenseTime released an obituary, Tang Xiaoou, founder of SenseTime, artificial intelligence scientist, director of Pujiang Laboratory, director of Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and professor of Chinese University of Hong Kong, died at 23:45 on December 15, 2023.

In addition to the position of founder and chairman of SenseTime, Tang Xiaoou is also an artificial intelligence scientist who founded the Multimedia Laboratory (MMLab) of Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2001, and later became the "Whampoa Military Academy" in the field of computer vision, cultivating a large number of outstanding AI scientists, such as Yan Shuicheng, co-CEO of Kunlun Wanwei Tiangong Intelligence, Xu Chunjing, director of Huawei's Noah's Ark Computer Vision Laboratory, Tao Dacheng, former top technical scientist of JD.com, Zhao Cong, the former head of AI vision at DJI, and other scientists, have enriched China's AI research and industry, and played an important role in the development of China's AI technology.

In fact, SenseTime was born with Tang Xiaoou's scientific research team as the main body, which has been investing heavily in research and development, and has a distinct scientist style. People familiar with SenseTime told the Beijing News Shell Financial Reporter that usually in SenseTime, Tang Xiaoou is called "Teacher Tang" more often. In the past five years, Tang Xiaoou has gradually faded out of SenseTime, and has become more active in the industry as a scholar, returning to the research field he is more familiar with.

"Professor Tang Xiaoou is an outstanding representative in the field of artificial intelligence in mainland 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 mainland China. He has been cultivating students for more than 20 years. They will inherit the spirit and philosophy of Professor Tang Xiaoou and move forward bravely on the road of developing artificial intelligence. SenseTime said in its obituary.

The original face recognition algorithm defeated Facebook

Born in Anshan, Liaoning Province in 1968, Tang Xiaoou graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1990 and went to the United States to study, where he received a master's degree from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and entered the University of Chinese Hong Kong in 1998 to work and founded MMLab in 2001.

At the beginning of its establishment, Tang Xiaoou set the tone for MMLab to focus on computer vision, at that time the hottest field in China is actually communications, computer vision and face recognition are unpopular fields, but Tang Xiaoou has his own unique understanding of scientific research, he attaches great importance to publishing articles to top conferences, he once said, "Doing research is like a competition on the sword, if you want to talk about the sword, you have to go to Huashan to discuss the sword, if you go to Taihang Mountain, Dabie Mountain to discuss the sword, even if you are famous, it is difficult to rank with other outstanding teams in the world." ”

For example, at that time, there were only a handful of students who could present scientific papers at top conferences, but Wang Xiaogang, a master of the laboratory, published five papers in CVPR and ICCV in two years, and Wang Xiaogang later became one of the co-founders of SenseTime and became the president of SenseTime.

Industry insiders said that one of Tang Xiaoou's biggest charms is that he has a good eye for people, and for the right talents, he will lobby the other party over and over again, and tell the other party the future potential and the path to realization, he brings many outstanding talents together, so that the team's scientific research ability has been greatly improved, and does not mind students using MMLab as a springboard. When he preached at the University of Science and Technology of China, Tsinghua University and other schools, he said, "MMLab doesn't mind that you come here to only study for a master's degree, but before you graduate from the master's degree, you must work hard to make results, and if you want to go to Europe and the United States for further study after that, I will help you apply together."

Tang Xiaoou believes that original AI technology needs three core elements, namely a good innovation environment, respect for talents, and full academic exchanges. In 2009, Tang Xiaoou was elected as an IEEE Fellow (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) for his achievements in pattern recognition and video processing, which is also the highest honor in the field of electronic engineering in the world.

Tang Xiaoou's judgment of scientific research path is as accurate as his judgment of talent. In 2009, he began to focus on the Xi school of deep learning in artificial intelligence, and soon decided to shift the focus of MMLab's research to the Xi of deep learning. In the years that followed, MMLab made great strides in using depth Xi methods for computer vision, and from 2011 to 2013, 14 of the 29 depth Xi papers at CVPR came from MMLab.

In 2014, Tang Xiaoou's team officially released the original face recognition algorithm, defeating Facebook and surpassing the human eye recognition ability for the first time, improving the accuracy rate to 98.52%, which made Tang Xiaoou's team famous. In 2016, MMLab was selected as one of the world's top 10 AI pioneer labs, the only one in Asia.

In addition, Tang Xiaoou is also a humorous and charismatic scientist, even Ma Huateng once bluntly said that Tang Xiaoou is a "joker", for example, Tang Xiaoou once joked, "In fact, we have backbone in academics, that is, 'you can't bend your waist for five buckets of rice', but if you are six buckets...... After all, it's one more bucket than five buckets. He often listened to Yu Qian's cross talk and slept, thinking, "How can a machine surpass such an interesting soul?" ”

Founded SenseTime to become one of the "AI Four Tigers".

In 2014, Tang Xiaoou's team received tens of millions of investment from IDG Capital, and co-founded SenseTime with his students Xu Li, Wang Xiaogang, Xu Bing, and his colleague Yang Fan at Microsoft Asia Research Institute. SenseTime quickly grew into one of China's "AI Tigers" and went public in Hong Kong on December 30, 2021.

According to SenseTime's financial report for the first half of 2023, as of June 30, 2023, Tang Xiaoou held 6.906 billion Class A shares through Amind, a wholly-owned company registered in the Cayman Islands, accounting for 21.73% of the company's equity, but through the Class A shares and Class B share structure, Tang Xiaoou accounted for 68.28% of the voting rights of the company's shareholders' general meeting resolutions.

Tang Xiaoou advocates the "black sheep culture" in SenseTime, requiring employees to have empathy, but not to fall into the "herd effect", to do things that others have not done, or even things that others can't think of. Tang Xiaoou has publicly stated that SenseTime will continue to make efforts in the fields of artificial intelligence talent training, industrial landing, and international cooperation, "focusing on enhancing originality, focusing on key core technologies, and ensuring that key core technologies are firmly in their own hands."

However, with the explosion of large language models at the end of last year, the field of computer vision that Tang Xiaoou's team is good at has gradually become the "previous generation of technology". On April 10, 2023, SenseTime held a technical exchange day, sharing the strategic layout of promoting the development of AGI (general artificial intelligence) with "large model + large computing power", and announced the "SenseNova" large model system under SenseTime's strategy. Among them, SenseTime's newly developed large language model was named "SenseChat", which later became one of the first large models approved for public use.

As a scientist-led company, SenseTime's R&D investment has remained high since its listing. From 2018 to 2022, SenseTime's R&D investment was 849 million yuan, 1.916 billion yuan, 2.454 billion yuan, 3.614 billion yuan, and 4.014 billion yuan respectively, and R&D expenses increased year by year. SenseTime's revenue in the first half of 2023 was RMB1.433 billion, up 1.3% year-on-year, and gross profit was RMB649 million, down 30.6% year-on-year.

However, compared to the identity of an entrepreneur, Tang Xiaoou is more like a teacher. Tang Xiaoou's last public appearance was at the opening ceremony of the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference on July 6 this year, sharing the original contributions made by his three students, Wang Xiaogang, He Kaiming, and Lin Dahua, in the field of large models. He summed up his research career with the research stories of three students, saying that his team's 18 work was the first time in the world that the Xi of depth science was applied to a visual problem, which is equivalent to "ringing the doorbell 18 times at the door of the Xi of depth learning".

At the end of the speech, Tang Xiaoou once again thanked the teachers and friends, "I want to say to Wang Xiaogang, He Kaiming, Lin Dahua, Chen Kai, Lu Chaochao, and all the students and teachers I have worked with: I didn't meet you in the best time, but I met you to have the best time." ”

In fact, Tang Xiaoou also brought the identity of a teacher into SenseTime, CEO Xu Li, Vice President Xu Bing, CTO Xu Zhiheng, Director of Hong Kong Chinese-SenseTime Joint Laboratory Lin Dahua, and Dean of the Institute Wang Xiaogang are all students of Professor Tang Xiaoou. Xu Bing said, "He is not only the soul of SenseTime, but also a beacon in the hearts of countless students." ”

"At this sad moment, we would like to 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. His company's mission, 'Insist on Originality and Let Artificial Intelligence Lead Human Progress' will inspire all SenseTime people to climb new heights and complete his unfinished business." May Professor Tang Xiaoou rest in peace!" SenseTime said in its obituary.

Beijing News Shell Financial Reporter Luo Yidan

Edited by Song Yuting

Proofreading by Jun Liu