TLDR:
- Dr. Fei-Fei Li has built an AI startup called World Labs worth $1 billion.
- Her company is focusing on developing technology with human-like visual data processing abilities.
The so-called “godmother of AI,” Dr. Fei-Fei Li, has built an AI startup called World Labs that’s already worth $1 billion, according to The Financial Times. Li has been tight-lipped about her plans for the startup, but unnamed sources in May told Reuters that the company will focus on developing technology capable of human-like visual data processing and advanced reasoning.
Li is renowned for her contributions to AI. She invented ImageNet, a dataset used for advancing computer vision that many see as a catalyst for the AI boom. She consults with policymakers as they work to set up guardrails for the technology, and was named one of 12 national AI research resource task force members by the U.S. White House in 2021.
She’s also less pessimistic about AI’s potential for harm than other leaders in the field. In an interview at Bloomberg Technology Summit in May, Li said she thinks the pervasive “doom and gloom” about generative artificial intelligence is overblown. “There’s so many ways we can use this to make people’s life better, work better,” she told Bloomberg’s Emily Cheng.