Young AI 'brain' pioneer dies in traffic accident

Feng Yanghe, an expert renowned for designing China's first artificial intelligence "brain" to run military operations, died on July 1 in a traffic accident in Beijing, the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence announced on Saturday.

According to the announcement, which was posted on the association's official account on NetEase, the associate professor at the National University of Defense Technology had been focusing his research on reinforcement learning, intelligent gaming, intelligent planning, military simulation and deduction technology.

Feng, 38, died at 2:35 am and had been working on a "major task", according to a notice from the organizing committee of his memorial service that was circulated among Chinese media.

Feng entered the National University of Defense Technology in 2003 to study command automation engineering. Between 2011 and 2013, he studied at the Department of Statistics at Harvard University and at the High Performance Computing Laboratory at the University of Iowa in the United States. In June 2014, he received his doctorate from the National University of Defense Technology, and started to teach and lead research programs.

Feng had made important breakthroughs in the use of AI to support military command and control operations. According to a report posted on the university's official WeChat account in October 2022, after taking part in a military exercise in 2014, he became determined to develop an AI command system to help the People's Liberation Army gain an advantage in planning operations for modern warfare.

He and his team developed an AI system named "War Skull", which can draft operation plans, conduct risk assessments and provide backup plans in advance based on incomplete tactical data.

In 2021, an AI-assisted task planning and decision-making system based on "War Skull" was put into use by 10 departments in theaters of operation, assorted forces and the national defense industry. Since then, it has supported several military exercises by the PLA, the report said.

Yu Chao, a professor at the School of Computer Science and Engineering at Sun Yat-sen University, said that Feng's AI command system is the first of its kind in China.

"Academic circles have lost a researcher from the new generation, and an outstanding young teacher. What's worse is that China has lost a pioneer and talent in developing AI in the field of national defense. His death at such a young age is a great loss," Yu said.