Early in the pandemic, an agent—literary, not software—suggested Fei-Fei Li write a book. The approach made sense. She has made an indelible mark on the field of artificial intelligence by heading a project started in 2006 called ImageNet. It classified millions of digital images to form what became a seminal training ground for the AI systems that rock our world today.
Li is currently the founding codirector of Stanford’s Institute of Human-Centered AI (HAI), whose very name is a plea for cooperation, if not coevolution, between people and intelligent machines. Accepting the agent’s challenge, Li spent the lockdown year churning out a draft. But when her cofounder at HAI, philosopher Jon Etchemendy, read it, he told her to start over—this time including her own journey in the field. “He said there’s plenty of technical people who can read an AI book,” says Li. “But I was missing an opportunity to tell all the young immigrants, women, and people of diverse backgrounds to understand that they can actually do AI, too.” Li is a private person who is uncomfortable talking about hersel