Fei-fei Li, often referred to as the “Godmother of AI” in groundbreaking work in the field, understands the deep value of academia. While at Princeton University, she made a major breakthrough in data training and now co-directs with Stanford’s people-oriented AI Institute (HAI). As she has seen, university research is facing widespread funding cuts under the Trump administration, which is the basis for the innovative economy of the United States.
“Almost all we know about classical knowledge of AI comes from academic research, whether it's algorithmic or data-driven approaches, or early research,” Lee said in a speech at Semafor Tech in San Francisco yesterday (May 21) (May 21). “Continue to nourish our higher education, our public sector, because this innovative, blue sky, curiosity-driven research is crucial to the health of our ecosystem.”
In recent months, the Trump administration has cut funding for major grant agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. As a result, some universities have stopped their PhDs. Adopt or implement a recruitment freeze, while researchers increasingly see opportunities abroad as efforts by other countries to attract American talent.
Li emphasized that it is essential to retain top academic thinking in the United States. “We are still the attraction of talent because many of these talents will eventually stay and contribute to the workforce,” she said, noting that visa quotas make it difficult for international researchers to stay in the country even before layoffs.
At World Labs, founded last year at Stanford University's Sea and World Laboratory (Li), she searches for fearless, resilience, and “perseverance, even for multiple failures.” In her opinion, the academic and private sectors are more similar than others in addressing “significant, deep technical issues that people have not yet solved.”
Explore the physical aspects of AI
Lee is currently on vacation at Stanford, focusing on the World Labs, raising more than $230 million last year from supporters such as Eric Schmidt, Reid Hoffman and Marc Benioff. The company is developing AI models that simulate 3D environments and can interact with the real world. Although most of its work is still in the package, World Labs provides a preview of generating virtual 3D scenes from 2D images in a December technology preview.
When asked about the company’s business model, Lee said, “We definitely want to make money.” Its early products could target artists, designers and developers working in industries such as movies, games, architecture, robot simulation and tourism. “All of these different use cases boil down to a key technology, creating and reasoning with the 3D world,” she said.
