Death of AI specialist, founder of controversial Chinese company SenseTime

2023-12-16 10:53:00

« In a statement released online, SenseTime announced with great sadness the passing of our beloved founder… Tang Xiao’ou. Following an incurable illness, he left us forever on December 15, 2023 at 11:45 p.m. said SenseTime.

Mr. Tang, a former student at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and ex-professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who established SenseTime in 2014, was around fifty years old. The precise cause of death of the famous computer scientist has not been specified.

In 2019, the company SenseTime was placed on a US commercial blacklist, accused of being part of China’s military-industrial complex over Beijing’s use of its technology for mass surveillance in the western Xinjiang region.

In December 2021, the company’s Hong Kong IPO was delayed by two weeks following SenseTime was placed under further restrictions by the United States over charges related to the same reason.

In its statement, SenseTime hailed Mr. Tang as “an outstanding representative in the field of AI in China,” describing him as “competent, academically rigorous, truth-seeking and pragmatic.”

“The company will continue to be inspired by the mission that Mr. Tang set out to emphasize originality and let AI guide human progress,” SenseTime said.

Mr. Tang had extensive experience in American academia, having received his doctorate from MIT in 1996 following a master’s degree from the University of Rochester in 1991.

What future for SenseTime

Tang was SenseTime’s largest shareholder, owning 20.63% of the company with 68.28% of its voting rights, according to SenseTime’s September interim report. With a fortune estimated at $2.5 billion, in February he was ranked 33rd in Forbes’ ranking of the richest people in Hong Kong.

SenseTime develops artificial intelligence technologies for various applications, from autonomous driving to augmented reality and medical imaging.

The company has also been heavily engaged in the development and application of large language models, an underlying technology of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, amid fierce competition among Chinese tech giants to come up with their own language products. Generative AI.

Despite its rapid rise, SenseTime ran into trouble in 2019, when the U.S. Commerce Department placed it on its Entity List, alongside more than 20 other Chinese companies.

This followed his alleged involvement in human rights abuses in northwest China’s Xinjiang region. A United Nations committee said at least a million members of the mostly Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority were detained in “re-education centers.”

Blacklisted companies are prohibited from doing business with U.S. companies without a license.

(with agencies)