"The Worlds I See" by Dr. Fei-Fei Li: A book about AI, humanity, and a deeply personal journey
In the book "The Worlds I See," Dr. Fei-Fei Li offers a narrative that is as much about artificial intelligence as it is about her own personal and professional journey. As a woman in tech, an immigrant, a scientist, a scholar, a teacher, and a foundational developer of AI, the book offers a richly layered perspective on the past several decades of technological development.
The book starts with Dr. Li’s early life and her move from China to the United States as a high school student. We learn about her challenges and intellectual passions and of the mentors who helped her through tremendous adversity. Dr. Li earned a full scholarship to Princeton as an undergraduate and then received her Ph.D. from the California Institute for Technology (CalTech). She achieved all this while taking care of her parents and helping to run a dry-cleaning business in New Jersey – even from California! She became a professor at Princeton and then at Stanford, where she served as the Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL). She is currently Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab. In 2017, she co-founded AI4ALL, a nonprofit organization working to increase diversity and inclusion in the field of artificial intelligence. Dr. Li is the real deal.
Dr. Li's unique position in the tech world allows her to provide an insider’s account of AI's evolution. She is renowned for her pivotal work in creating the "ImageNet" dataset. ImageNet is a large visual database designed for use in visual object recognition software research. It significantly advanced the field of computer vision and artificial intelligence by providing a large, structured dataset for training machine learning algorithms, particularly in the development and improvement of deep learning systems. Reading the story of ImageNet offers an overview of the underpinnings of AI and, therefore, what the technology is and how it works.
But this book isn’t just about technology and AI. Characterized by an uncommon mix of humility, curiosity, and compassion, Dr. Li’s enthusiasm for learning is deeply intertwined with her humanistic values. She advocates for a balance between technological advancement and ethical considerations, a theme that resonates throughout the book.
As Dr. Li’s career developed, she became focused on leveraging AI to help improve peoples’ lives leading her to apply this technology in healthcare. I found it painful to hear her reaction to some of the dehumanizing statistics that those of us healthcare insiders have become so accustomed to, such as the number of lives lost each year due to medical error. Her discussion on this topic not only informs but also inspires, showcasing the positive impacts AI can have on our lives.
Despite her optimism about AI's potential to better our lives, Dr. Li remains sober about its potential to do harm without direct intervention to drive the technology toward positive purpose. She highlights the need for responsible and ethical AI development, and one that focuses on equity and inclusion.
After reading "The Worlds I See" I have developed a profound respect for Dr. Li due to her brilliance, her creative spark, her strong commitment to a north star, and her humility. The book is a rare gem that intertwines personal story, a history of AI, and thoughts on the future, all in a compelling read that kept me captivated. I am left feeling a deep sense of gratitude for Dr. Li for being vulnerable and brave in sharing her own story and in daring to be bold, ground-breaking, and visionary in leading forward.
If you’ve read “The Worlds I See”, I’d love to hear your thoughts!