Owning the AI “godmother” moniker was uncomfortable at first for Fei-Fei Li, who is known for building a large-scale database of labeled images critical to advancing the way computers comprehend digital images and videos. But at one point, she wasn’t even sure if she should be the one to serve as CEO of her startup.
Today, Li does run World Labs, which has generated $230 million in funding. The company is aiming to build AI that can process and replicate the three-dimensional world.
“One thing always fascinating and driving me is unlocking the full capability of the science of machine intelligence,” Li said during a panel focused on “The Future of (Ethical) AI” at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women conference. Li spoke alongside Campbell Brown, senior advisor to AI content and licensing company TollBit.
Li’s prominence in the AI shift has been key to understanding the abilities—and limits—of the technology amid the hype, Brown said. “Some of the people at the forefront have been somewhat hyperbolic, perhaps,” she said. Still, Li and World Labs are tackling monumental ideas.
In hundreds of millions of years of evolution of human intelligence, language hasn’t been that impressive, Li explained. It took roughly 430 million years for advanced animals to develop spatial intelligence, whereas language abilities like those replicated by buzzy LLMs came together in just “a million years-ish,” she said.
But even with years of expertise in the field of machine intelligence and a laundry-list of esteemed positions, from Google vice president and chief scientist, to Stanford professor to author, Li was hesitant to take center stage.
Indeed, her first reaction was to just reject the “godmother” status. “I did cringe,” said Li. But she decided not to fight it in order to encourage other women, especially women in the STEM fields that have been dominated by men for so long.
“In the entire history of science and technology, so many men are called founding fathers or godfathers,” she noted. “If women are so readily rejecting that title, where is our voice?”
So many of the claims about the global scale, infinite production, and “billions of whatever” about AI are hype, Li added.
“It’s so hyperbolic,” Li said. But she maintains that AI could change the world, and “everyone who cares” should have a place in the technological shift, whether that’s research or governance or adoption.
“It’s so important that people from all backgrounds feel they have a role,” Li said.
