Concerns in China after a number of premature deaths among the top researchers: “Competition is extremely harsh”

A number of premature deaths among China's top experts in the field of artificial intelligence (IA) has aroused concerns about the safety of this industry and the very stressful research environment, reports South China Morning Post.

Sudden dead among some Chinese top photo shutterstock researchers

Artificial intelligence is one of the important areas in which the technological “war” between the US and China is worn. The ascension of Chinese companies such as Deepseek have recently caused US technological companies on US domination in this sector. Although China has an increasing basin of artificial intelligence talents and has many success stories, the country has also lost a handful of prominent personalities.

Chinese researcher in computer science Liu Shaoshan told South China Morning Post that, although they receive very high salaries, artificial intelligence researchers are subjected to huge pressures.

“The industry is developing too quickly, and the competition is extremely harsh”, she points out, adding that until an researcher comes with an idea and reaches the middle of an experiment, someone else may have already published on the same topic.

Liu explained that specialists in the field are also facing ethical pressures. “Artificial intelligence can also have a major impact on society as its use extends, and this unknown potential to produce huge changes in society can cause them extremely high moral pressure.” he emphasizes.

South China Morning Post has made a list of the main Chinese scientists in the field that died of young people, most of them in the period of maximum productivity in their career and working in essential areas such as computerized vision, artificial military intelligence and medical.

Sun Jian

In June 2022, Sun Jian, chief researcher of the Chinese company of Megvii Technology, based in Beijing, died from a sudden disease, at the age of 45. Megvii develops image recognition software and deep learning.

Sun was a renowned figure in the field of artificial intelligence and computerized vision. Former Microsoft researcher, with years of experience in computational photography, returned to China, joining the start-up Megvii in 2016, as chief researcher and general manager of the research department.

Here he led the development of a neural network for mobile devices and the company's platform.

Sun received numerous awards from the industry and the academic environment. It was included in the list of “innovators under 35” of Mit Technology Review in 2010. He owned 35 patents in the US, of which 13 internationally registered.

Feng Yanghe

In July 2023, Feng Yanghe, an artificial intelligence expert for China's defense sector, died in Beijing on the way to an “important mission”, at the age of 38, according to an obituary.

Feng – whose research was focused on war games, learning through intelligent reinforcement and planning – was an associate professor at the National University of Defense Technology (Nude) in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province.

One of the main software developers used in Chinese military simulations, he drove the teams that created the systems used by the popular liberation army to simulate war games in common operations.

Before joining Nude, Feng studied statistics at Harvard University and high performance calculation at the University of Iowa, within a common training program between 2011 and 2013.

Tang xiaooou

Also in 2023, the expert in Ia Tang Xiaou, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the founder of the Chinese technological giant Sensetime, died at the age of 55. According to the obituary, Tang died from a disease, whose nature was not revealed.

Tang was born in 1968 in the province of Liaoning and graduated from the University of Science and Technology in China before going to the US for postgraduate studies. He obtained a master's degree at the University of Rochester in 1991 and a doctorate at MIT in 1996.

Tang, whose research interests included computerized vision, models recognition and video processing, promoted industrialization of technology in the visual field in China.

He was manager of the visual calculation group at Microsoft Research Asia between 2005 and 2008.

In 2014, he founded Senseime, known as one of the four “Dragons of Ia” in China.

Sensetime technology allows facial capture from several angles and real -time facial recognition. In some cities in China, the company's products are used to monitor the density of the crowd and to detect illegally parked cars. Using its generative model Ririxin, Sensetime has developed business in fields such as finance, health and office work.

He zhi

He Zhi, co -founder and director for innovation of Yidu Tech, specialized in medical solutions based on artificial intelligence, died in 2024, just 41 years old.

He was a pioneer in the process of digitizing the China medical industry, according to an obituary published on social networks. He suffered a respiratory and cardiac arrest due to the altitude evil, while in the province of Qinghai, an area of ​​western China located at high altitude. He died on the morning of April 29, despite resuscitation efforts.

In 2000, He entered the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering at Tsinghua University. He obtained a master's degree in engineering and electronic communications from the same university in 2009.

Between 2012 and 2014 he worked at the Chinese giant Alibaba, who also owns South China Morning Post.

In 2015, he joined Yidu Tech as one of the co -founders, being responsible for innovation and technological development. The company based in Beijing offers medical solutions based on Ia and “Big Data”.

Quan Yuhui

Quan Yuhui, an expert in image processing and associate professor at the Faculty of Informatics and Engineering at the University of South China (Shield) in the province of Guangdong, died on January 14, at the age of 39, according to an obituary of the university that mentions a disease without providing details.

Born in 1985, Quan did his university and doctoral studies at the Shield, obtaining the license in 2008 and the doctorate in 2013. After a postdoctoral internship at the National University of Singapore in 2016, he started his university career, being a associate professor until the end of his life.

Quan, whose research interests included computational photography, unattended learning and texture analysis, was considered a talent in the field.

He has led numerous national and provincial projects, has published over 80 scientific articles in top magazines and has been evaluator for prestigious international publications and conferences. Was included on the list “The best 2% scientists in the world” of Stanford University in 2024.