Fei-Fei Li, discreet pioneer of artificial intelligence

The list of “key figures” in artificial intelligence published on December 3, 2023, in the New York Times left Silicon Valley feminists aghast. Not a single woman is featured in this club of 12 celebrities listed in alphabetical order. The list goes from A for Altman, Sam, the co-founder of OpenAI and creator of ChatGPT, to Z for Zuckerberg, Mark, the co-founder of Facebook and CEO of Meta.

“Couldn’t find any women?” scoffed Kara Swisher, the feared technology sector columnist, on X (ex-Twitter). She then added: “I’ve got binders full of them, starting with Fei-Fei Li,” the Stanford researcher often described as the “godmother” of AI. Fei-Fei Li retweeted the journalist’s message, adding a note of modesty. “It’s not about me, it’s about all of us in AI, all the incredible “godmothers,” pioneers, researchers, students of all backgrounds. I’ve got binders of them too.”

At the age of 47, the Chinese-born scientist is known the world over by her first name alone, Fei-Fei, and occupies a special place in the Who’s Who of artificial intelligence. In 2009, she invented ImageNet, the gigantic database that enabled the explosion of machine learning, the learning capacity of computers. Since 2019, she has been co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). She has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine in the United States. Fei-Fei founded the AI4ALL (“AI for All”) association, which aims to democratize access to AI.

A book to warn of the dangers of AI

In early November, the researcher published The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI (Flatiron Books, 2023). It blends her personal story with that of the development of artificial intelligence. In the book, she traces the journey that led her to alert Congress to the dangers of AI in 2018, almost 30 years after her arrival in the USA. Her journey is the embodiment of the American dream.

Her book couldn’t have come at a better time. Ever since the saga of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman getting sacked on November 17 only to be reinstated a few days later, the American public has been fascinated by artificial intelligence and the civilizational issues it raises. Fei-Fei’s story is already one of the year’s bestsellers in the USA.

Fei-Fei was born in Beijing in 1976. She hardly spoke a word of English when she arrived in the United States at the age of 15. Like many migrants, her parents, who had lived in relative comfort in China, were plunged into poverty . They were consumed by running a laundry that never made a profit.

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