This Google research scientist died unexpectedly, leaving a last note two months ago: Working on large model research made me deeply depressed

“Goodbye, Felix!”

This Thursday, the artificial intelligence community said goodbye to a scientist in its own way.
Felix Hill, a research scientist at Google DeepMind, died on December 5, 2024. He had been battling severe mental illness since early 2023.
Before his death, he had worked at Google DeepMind for nearly 9 years.

“It still hurts to think about it now,” said Kyunghyun Cho, a professor of computer science and data science at New York University and co-founder and senior director of the biotech company Prescient Design. He wrote an article to commemorate his acquaintance and research partnership with Felix.

It was 2014, Kyunghyun Cho was a postdoctoral fellow in Montreal, with Yoshua Bengio as his advisor, and Felix was a visiting scholar who had just arrived in…