Before becoming a leading figure in artificial intelligence, Fei-Fei Li had a very different start in life. The Stanford professor and founder of the AI startup World Labs, now valued at over $1 billion, began her journey helping her family run a small dry-cleaning business. Li moved to the United States from China at the age of 15 and worked in restaurants to support her family. Eventually, she managed the family’s dry-cleaning shop in Parsippany, New Jersey. “We were not financially very well off at all. My parents were doing cashier jobs and I was doing Chinese restaurant jobs,” she said. “My family and I decided to run a little dry cleaner shop to make some money to survive.”
Jokingly calling herself the “CEO,” Li ran the shop for 7 years, from age 18 into the middle of her graduate studies. She handled customer calls, billing, inspections and even managed the business remotely while pursuing a Ph.D. at Caltech. This experience, she said, taught her the value of resilience. “As a scientist, you have to be resilient because science is a non-linear journey. Nobody has all the solutions. You have to go through such a challenge to find an answer. And as an immigrant, you learn to be resilient,” Li explained, highlighting how her early challenges shaped her approach to problem-solving.
Today, Li is focused on building world models at World Labs. These advanced AI systems use spatial intelligence, or the ability to understand, perceive, reason and interact with the world. Experts believe world models could drive the next phase of the AI revolution, moving beyond current language-based models. Her earlier work on ImageNet, a comprehensive dataset of visual information, laid the foundation for these innovations. Li believes that visual understanding is essential for AI to perform real-world actions, a goal shared by other top AI researchers.
Li attributes much of her drive and curiosity to her early life experiences. “I was always a curious kid, and then my curiosity had an outlet, which was science and that really grounded me,” she said. “I wasn’t curious about nightclubs or other things. I was an avid lover of science.” From managing a dry-cleaning shop to leading breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, Fei-Fei Li’s journey is a testament to resilience, curiosity and vision, showing how humble beginnings can lead to world-changing innovation.
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