The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI2023

The moving memoir of a girl coming of age as an immigrant in America who finds her calling as a scientist at the forefront of the AI/Machine Learning revolution—A Moment of Lift Imprint book Wired magazine called Fei-Fei Li, “one of a tiny group of scientists—a group perhaps small enough to fit around a kitchen table—who are responsible for AI’s recent remarkable advances.” Known to the world as the creator of ImageNet, a key catalyst of modern artificial intelligence, Fei-Fei has spent more than two decades at the forefront of the field. But her career in science was improbable from the start, as her family faced a transition from China’s middle class to American poverty, navigated the hardships of immigrant life, and struggled to care for an ailing mother at every step. Her adolescent knack for physics endured, however, sparking a journey that would lead her to computer science, experimental cognitive science, and, ultimately, the still-obscure world of AI. It positioned her to make a defining contribution to the breakthrough we now call the deep learning revolution, placed her at the center of a global transformation, and brought her face-to-face with the extraordinary possibilities—and extraordinary dangers—of the technology she loves. The Worlds I See is a story of science in the first person, documenting one of the century’s defining moments from the inside. Emotionally raw and intellectually uncompromising, it’s a testament to the passion required for even the most technical scholarship, and the curiosity forever at its heart.