AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li: ‘I’m more concerned about the risks that are here and now’

The Stanford professor and godmother' of artificial intelligence on why existential worries are not her priority, and her work to ensure the technology improves the human condition

Fei-Fei Li is a pioneer of modern artificial intelligence (AI). Her work provided a crucial ingredient - big data - for the deep learning breakthroughs that occurred in the early 2010s. Li's new memoir, The Worlds I See, tells her story of finding her calling at the vanguard of the AI revolution and charts the development of the field from the inside. Li, 47, is a professor of computer science at Stanford University, where she specialises in computer vision. She is also a founding co-director of Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), which focuses on AI research, education and policy to improve the human condition, and a founder of the nonprofit AI4ALL, which aims to increase the diversity of people building AI systems.

AI is promising to transform the world in ways that don't necessarily seem for the better: killing jobs, supercharging disinformation and surveillance, and causing harm through biased algorithms. Do you take any responsibility for how AI is being used?
First, to be clear, AI is promising" nothing. It is people who are promising - or not promising. AI is a piece of software. It is made by people, deployed by people and governed by people.