Employee of China's DeepSeek, writes a 'sentimental letter' on AI

A DeepSeek engineer has penned an emotional letter detailing the emotional toll of building increasingly sophisticated AI systems, aware that the same technology could eventually render his job obsolete. In the letter, published on his public WeChat account, Liu Shengyu, an engineer at China's OpenAI and Anthropic competitor, reflects on how rapidly AI has transformed his work over the past year.

From assisting with document searches and bug identification to mastering operator design and programming, Liu notes that AI has advanced at a pace far exceeding expectations.

Liu's pride lies in DeepSeek v4.1's achievement, as he was among those who contributed to its key Attention operator. However, he acknowledges that AI-written operators could eventually outperform his own work. He wonders why he continues to pursue AI development when it could eventually replace the very work he enjoys. "Humans have never hesitated when it comes to engineering their own destruction," Liu writes, suggesting that embracing the changes may be the best course of action.

The letter highlights the rapid progress of AI in operator design and programming. Within a year, AI has evolved from a simple assistant that could only help with documentation and code to an operator master capable of independently reading and optimizing complex code. Liu believes that AI will soon be able to design operator schedulers, evaluate scheduling schemes, implement them, and optimize them.

Despite his pride in DeepSeek v4.1's accomplishment, Liu recognizes that AI's capabilities are rapidly improving. He concedes that within six months to a year, AI-generated operators may surpass his own. While he is uncertain if this will lead to job loss, he believes that his role may need to evolve, potentially shifting from operator design to utilizing AI for high-performance outputs.