Dr. Fei-Fei Li is known as the “godmother of AI.” She’s been at the center of AI’s biggest breakthroughs for over two decades. She spearheaded ImageNet, the dataset that sparked the deep-learning revolution we’re living right now, served as Google Cloud’s Chief AI Scientist, directed Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, and co-founded Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI. In this conversation, Fei-Fei shares the rarely told history of how we got here—including the wild fact that just nine years ago, calling yourself an AI company was basically a death sentence.

We discuss:

1. How ImageNet helped spark the AI explosion we’re living through [09:37]

2. Why world models and spatial intelligence represent the next frontier in AI, beyond large language models [23:53]

3. Why Fei-Fei believes AI won’t replace humans but will require us to take responsibility for ourselves [05:31]

4. The surprising applications of Marble, from movie production to psychological research [48:02]

5. Why robotics faces unique challenges compared with language models and what’s needed to overcome them [40:45]

6. How to participate in AI regardless of your role [01:14:24]

Brought to you by:

Figma Make—A prompt-to-code tool for making ideas real

Justworks—The all-in-one HR solution for managing your small business with confidence

Sinch—Build messaging, email, and calling into your product

Where to find Dr. Fei-Fei Li:

• X: https://x.com/drfeifei

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fei-fei-li-4541247

• World Labs: https://www.worldlabs.ai

Referenced:

• From Words to Worlds: Spatial Intelligence Is AI’s Next Frontier: https://drfeifei.substack.com/p/from-words-to-worlds-spatial-intelligence

• World Lab’s Marble GA blog post: https://www.worldlabs.ai/blog/marble-world-model

• Fei-Fei’s quote about AI on X: https://x.com/drfeifei/status/963564896225918976

• ImageNet: https://www.image-net.org

• Alan Turing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

• Dartmouth workshop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_workshop

• John McCarthy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scientist)

• WordNet: https://wordnet.princeton.edu

• Game-Changer: How the World’s First GPU Leveled Up Gaming and Ignited the AI Era: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/first-gpu-gaming-ai

• Geoffrey Hinton on X: https://x.com/geoffreyhinton

• Amazon Mechanical Turk: https://www.mturk.com

• Why experts writing AI evals is creating the fastest-growing companies in history | Brendan Foody (CEO of Mercor): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/experts-writing-ai-evals-brendan-foody

• Surge AI: https://surgehq.ai

• First interview with Scale AI’s CEO: $14B Meta deal, what’s working in enterprise AI, and what frontier labs are building next | Jason Droege: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/first-interview-with-scale-ais-ceo-jason-droege

• Alexandr Wang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrwang

• Even the ‘godmother of AI’ has no idea what AGI is: https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/03/even-the-godmother-of-ai-has-no-idea-what-agi-is

• AlexNet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlexNet

• Demis Hassabis interview: https://deepmind.google/discover/the-podcast/demis-hassabis-the-interview

• Elon Musk on X: https://x.com/elonmusk

• Jensen Huang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenhsunhuang

• Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI: https://hai.stanford.edu

• Percy Liang on X: https://x.com/percyliang

• Christopher Manning on X: https://x.com/chrmanning

• With spatial intelligence, AI will understand the real world: https://www.ted.com/talks/fei_fei_li_with_spatial_intelligence_ai_will_understand_the_real_world

• Rosalind Franklin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin

• Chris Dixon on X: https://x.com/cdixon

• James Watson and Francis Crick: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/watson_and_crick.shtml

• $46B of hard truths from Ben Horowitz: Why founders fail and why you need to run toward fear (a16z co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/46b-of-hard-truths-from-ben-horowitz

• The Bitter Lesson: http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

• Sebastian Thrun on X: https://x.com/sebastianthrun

• DARPA Grand Challenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

• Marble: https://marble.worldlabs.ai/?utm_source=media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=marble_launch

• Justin Johnson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-johnson-41b43664

• Christoph Lassner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christoph-lassner-475a669b

• Ben Mildenhall on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-mildenhall-86b4739b

• The Matrix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix

• Inside ChatGPT: The fastest-growing product in history | Nick Turley (Head of ChatGPT at OpenAI): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-chatgpt-nick-turley

• v03: https://v03ai.com

• Allegory of the cave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave

• Jeff Dean on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-dean-8b212555

• Geoffrey Hinton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Hinton

• John Etchemendy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-etchemendy-891708a

• James Landay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/landay

• How to Make A.I. That’s Good for People: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/opinion/artificial-intelligence-human.html

• Charlie Munger quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8690661-take-a-simple-idea-and-take-it-seriously

• National AI Research Resource: https://hai.stanford.edu/policy/policy-efforts/national-ai-research-resource

Recommended book:

• The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI: https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-See-Curiosity-Exploration-Discovery-ebook/dp/B0BPQSLVL6

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

My biggest takeaways from this conversation:...