The Worlds I See by Fei-Fei Li (2024)

About a dozen pages into Fei-Fei Li ’s forthcoming book, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI, she shares the story behind her name.

On the day Fei-Fei was born in Beijing, her father had been so absorbed in an impromptu day of bird-watching that he lost track of time, and arrived late—“absurdly so,” as Fei-Fei later noted. The mishap brought to his mind the Mandarin word fēi meaning “to fly.” It was a whimsical choice of a name that reflected his creative sensibility, as well as the grace of her mother, who didn’t let his tardiness spoil a name that she liked, too. The soaring heights of Fei-Fei’s remarkable life and career proves the name apt, and as AI’s transformative impact takes flight, her book is the powerfully human, insightful, and inspiring frame the world needs.

The Worlds I See is a story that unfolds across three remarkable acts. The first serves the foundation to what follows: a deeply touching memoir of an immigrant family’s story of struggle, sacrifice, and love. Her parents’ difficult transition in leaving a comfortable (even if constrained) life in China, to start over in America so their high school-aged daughter would have the freedom to reach her potential is touchingly rendered. Fei-Fei vividly describes the struggles to make ends meet, the pressures felt in the most ordinary of things, and the deep sense of isolation she carried. While she would go on to get a full scholarship at Princeton, followed by a PhD at CalTech, it’s apparent that she never forgot her humble roots and the sacrifices her parents made so she could pursue her dreams. She also shows deep gratitude for the support from a high school teacher, demonstrating the depths of her awareness and appreciation.

The second act is her remarkable entrepreneurial journey. As the founder of ImageNet—the visual library project that arguably unleashed the return of neural networks and led us to our present wave of AI breakthroughs—she recounts the winding road from the seed of the idea, the challenges in bringing it to life, and negative feedback from those who did not see what she did. Yet like all great entrepreneurs, Fei-Fei’s persistence, creativity, and passion kept her committed, even when she feared she had torpedoed her nascent career or let down those who had trusted her. Instead, her team’s multi-year efforts eventually laid the groundwork for our current AI era. It’s a classic Silicon Valley story of vision, tenacity, and hard work.

The final third of the book gives readers a front-row seat at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) . Fei-Fei is the founding director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) and spent a sabbatical serving as Chief Scientist at Google Cloud. Over the past decade, as AI’s progress accelerated, she traces how the center of gravity shifted from academia to industry. In this part of the book, Fei-Fei thoughtfully articulates the range of moral, ethical, and societal considerations that this AI has ushered in. She artfully weaves together her mother’s medical journey alongside her own work to integrate AI into healthcare to improve care. As she does throughout the book, she never loses sight of the profound human questions involved with AI.

In the book’s closing pages, Fei-Fei recounts her testimony to Congress and reflects that “AI [is] now a responsibility. For all of us.” Perfectly said. Technology is the story of humanity. People— and the tools we create—are inextricably bound. I share Fei-Fei’s belief that we have a moral imperative that “AI must become as committed to humanity as it’s always been to science.”

We are truly lucky that Fei-Fei is at the forefront of ensuring this happens. Her story is an inspiration and an education that I believe many will enjoy. You can pre-order her book today: