Fei Fei Li is a Chinese-American computer scientist, artificial intelligence (AI) researcher, and professor at Stanford University. Li is a very well-known figure in the tech world and is famously known as the ‘Godmother of AI’. Her groundbreaking work, particularly in computer vision, helped shape the development of AI.
Fei-Fei Li is a renowned researcher in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, cognitive neuroscience, and computational neuroscience. Her work has been published in numerous academic and scientific journals. Her most notable work is the ImageNet project, which changed large-scale visual recognition. Li’s research has contributed to Natural Scene Understanding and story-telling of images. She has also expanded her research to artificial intelligence in healthcare.
She has authored more than hundreds of research articles and won multiple awards and accolades for her research and contributions. Li is also described as “a researcher bringing humanity to AI.”
In 2023, she was named in the list of Time’s 100 AI Most Influential People. She was also honored with the Intel Lifetime Achievements Innovation Award in 2023 for her contributions to AI.
A few months later, she was appointed to the United Nations Scientific Advisory Board. This year, Li was named in the Gold House’s most impactful Asian A100 list.
This article will look into this brilliant woman’s net worth, education, career, and more.
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Fei Fei Li Net Worth
Despite being so well-known, there is no credible information on Fei Fei Li’s net worth, available in the public domain. We will update this section as soon as soon as any information becomes available.
However, given her success in the industry, it is possible, she must have gained significant personal wealth.
Education
Fei Fei Li was born in 1976 in Beijing, China, and moved to the United States when she was 15. She went to Parsippany High School and graduated in 1995 and was included in her high school’s Hall of Fame in 2017.
Li holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics from Princeton University. Though she majored in Physics, she also received certifications in computational mathematics and engineering physics.
To pursue higher studies, Li went to the California Institute of Technology, where she completed her Doctor of Philosophy in electrical engineering in 2005.
For her PhD, she wrote a dissertation on “Visual Recognition: Computational Models and Human Psychophysics.”
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Career
Fei-Fei Li’s career began as an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2005. Two years later, she served as an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton University.
In 2009, she joined Stanford University as an assistant professor, was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2012, and then to full professor in 2018.
At Stanford, Li directed the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL). She became the founding co-director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute, alongside Dr. John Etchemendy.
During her sabbatical from Stanford, Li joined Google Cloud as its Chief Scientist of AI/ML and Vice President. Her team at Google focused on democratizing AI technology and lowering the barrier for businesses and developers, developing products like AutoML.
In September 2017, Google secured a contract with the Department of Defense called Project Maven, aimed at using AI to interpret images captured by drone cameras. Despite internal protests, Google maintained that its role in Project Maven was for non-offensive purposes. Li expressed enthusiasm for Google Cloud’s involvement in Project Maven but cautioned against mentioning its AI component due to public concerns about military AI.
In June 2018, Google decided not to seek renewal of the Project Maven contract. Li later stated that she believes in human-centered AI to benefit people positively and benevolently and is against weaponizing AI.
In the fall of 2018, Li left Google and returned to Stanford University to continue her professorship.
Li is also known for her non-profit work as the co-founder and chairperson of AI4ALL, an organization dedicated to educating the next generation of AI technologists and leaders by promoting diversity and inclusion through human-centered AI principles. AI4ALL was created in collaboration with Melinda French Gates and Jensen Huang.
Before AI4ALL, Li and her former student Olga Russakovsky co-founded and co-directed a precursor program at Stanford called SAILORS (Stanford AI Lab OutReach Summers), an annual summer camp for 9th-grade high school girls focused on AI education and research. SAILORS, established in 2015, was renamed AI4ALL @Stanford in 2017.
By 2018, AI4ALL had expanded to include programs at Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University, Boston University, the University of California Berkeley, and Canada’s Simon Fraser University.
In 2020, Fei Fei Li joined the board of directors of Twitter, however, after Elon Musk’s acquisition, she was removed from Twitter’s nine-member board of directors.
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Latest Updates –
In March 2024, Fei Fei Li founded World Labs, an AI startup. In a record time of just four months, her startup achieved the unicorn status. The startup of this AI pioneer aims to change AI forever. This leap in technology holds the potential to transform various industries, including healthcare and manufacturing.
World Labs has already completed two funding rounds, with the latest raising approximately $100 million from prominent investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Radical Ventures. This strong financial backing underscores the high expectations and enthusiasm within the tech industry for the innovative solutions World Labs is developing.
In September 2024, World Labs, an artificial intelligence startup, officially launched on September 13. The company is valued at over $1 billion and has secured more than $230 million in funding to develop ‘spatial intelligence‘ systems.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Where did Fei-Fei Li go to college?
Fei Fei Li went to Princeton University and graduated in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics. To pursue higher studies, Li went to the California Institute of Technology, where she completed her Doctor of Philosophy in electrical engineering in 2005.
Why is Fei Fei Li called the Godmother of AI?
Fei Fei Li is often referred to as the Godmother of AI due to her groundbreaking research in computer vision and artificial intelligence. Her work has significantly influenced the development of AI technologies.
Did Fei Fei Li start a new startup of her own?
In March 2024, Fei Fei Li founded World Labs, an AI startup. In a record time of just four months, her startup achieved the unicorn status.
