In a bold statement, Professor Fei-Fei Li, often referred to as the 'godmother' of AI, shared her unique perspective with the BBC. She expressed pride in being the sole woman among seven esteemed pioneers of artificial intelligence, who will receive a prestigious engineering award from the King.
Today, Prof. Li and her fellow laureates will be honored with the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering at St. James's Palace. Among them are Prof. Yoshua Bengio, Dr. Bill Dally, Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, Prof. John Hopfield, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, and Dr. Yann LeCun, Meta's Chief AI Scientist. Their collective contributions to modern machine learning, a cornerstone of AI's rapid progress, have earned them this recognition.
But here's where it gets controversial: while Prof. Li embraces her 'godmother' title, the three 'godfathers' of AI - Dr. Hinton, Prof. Bengio, and Dr. LeCun - have publicly disagreed on the potential dangers of AI. Dr. Hinton has voiced serious concerns about an 'extinction-level threat,' while Dr. LeCun has dismissed such warnings as exaggerated. Prof. Li takes a pragmatic approach, seeing these disagreements as healthy debates necessary for such a profound and impactful field.
Prof. Li's journey is an inspiring one. Born in China, she emigrated to the US as a teenager and rose to prominence in computer science. She is now the co-director of the Stanford Computer Science Department and the co-founder and CEO of World Labs. Her work on ImageNet, a project that revolutionized computer vision, is a cornerstone of modern AI technology.
She believes the next AI milestone will be its ability to interact with the world, a skill innate to humans and animals. This could 'superpower' humans in creativity, robotics, learning, design, and architecture.
The Queen Elizabeth Prize, awarded annually, recognizes engineers whose innovations benefit humanity globally. Previous recipients include Sir Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web. Lord Vallance, chair of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation, praised the winners for their exceptional contributions to engineering and their commitment to sustaining our planet and transforming our lives.
So, as we celebrate these AI pioneers, what are your thoughts on the potential of AI and its impact on our world? Do you agree with Prof. Li's pragmatic approach, or do you lean more towards the concerns raised by Dr. Hinton? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
