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

by Fei-Fei Li

Now, still breathless from my first brush with real discovery, I found myself searching the skies for a North Star of my own: the kind of idea—a question, a hypothesis, a bet—that any scientist worth their stripes would chase to the ends of the earth. Beyond, even.

I wondered, in fact, if the true value of the North Star as a metaphor wasn’t just its ability to guide but the fact that its distance remains perpetually infinite. It can be pursued until the point of exhaustion, the object of a lifetime’s obsession, but never be reached. It’s a symbol of the scientist’s most distinctive trait: a curiosity so restless that it repels satisfaction, like opposing magnets, forever. A star in the night, a mirage in the distance, a road without end. This, I realized, was what AI was becoming for me. ImageNet was a turning point, and one certainly worth celebrating, but it wasn’t the end of the journey. If anything, it was the start of an even grander one. And beyond that, I was now certain, more awaited than could fit in a career, and even a life.

That’s why my greatest joy comes from knowing that this journey will never be complete. Neither will I. There will always be something new to chase. To a scientist, the imagination is a sky full of North Stars.