AI 'Godmother' built future on dry cleaning skills

Fei-Fei Li, a prominent Stanford professor and a leading figure in artificial intelligence, built a significant part of her foundation while working in her family's dry cleaning business. For seven years, Li managed the shop, an experience she says taught her invaluable lessons in resilience. This resilience, honed through both her business and immigrant background, has been central to her groundbreaking scientific endeavors.

Her early career involved immigrating from China and helping her parents make ends meet by running their shop in Parsippany, New Jersey. Li managed customer relations, billing, and inspections, which she describes as essential training. She later pursued higher education, first at Princeton and then Caltech, continuing to manage the business remotely.

Now, as the founder of the AI startup World Labs, Li is focused on developing 'world models.' These advanced AI systems aim to understand and interact with the world, building upon the visual intelligence concepts she pioneered with ImageNet. Li believes these models represent the next frontier in the AI revolution.