The Worlds I See Quotes

“I believe our civilization stands on the cusp of a technological revolution with the power to reshape life as we know it. To ignore the millennia of human struggle that serves as our society’s foundation, however—to merely “disrupt,” with the blitheness that has accompanied so much of this century’s innovation—would be an intolerable mistake. This revolution must build on that foundation, faithfully. It must respect the collective dignity of a global community. And”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“For a Chinese student raised in the schools of Chengdu, my first days at Parsippany High School were an assault on the senses. The mood was manic and unsteady, and everything around me was brighter, faster, heavier, and noisier than the world I left behind. Nothing quite registered, no matter where I looked, as if the very nature of light and sound were somehow different here.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“To an ESL student, every class is an English class.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“Among science’s greatest virtues, however, is its ability to recast a lesson in humility as a moment of possibility.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“If I were to dedicate my life to science, whatever form that might take, it would be by the grace of the people I’d met during my lowest and most confusing days. More and more, I was feeling something I hadn’t in a long time: I was grateful.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“Turing’s vision was shared by his fellow computer scientists in America, who codified their curiosity in 1956 with a now famous Dartmouth College research proposal in which the term “artificial intelligence” was coined.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“although many of AI’s founding contributors would go on to explore an eclectic range of fields, including psychology and cognitive science, their backgrounds were almost exclusively centered on mathematics, electrical engineering, and physics itself.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“I’d used many different words to describe this new incarnation of what I once had viewed purely as a science. “Phenomenon.” “Disruption.” “Puzzle.” “Privilege.” “Force of nature.” But as I retraced my steps across the capital, one new word took precedence. AI was now a responsibility. For all of us. This,”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“Two worlds were forming. There was real life, in which I continued to worry about my mother’s health, our ability to keep up with our finances, and my own status as an outsider (albeit an increasingly fortunate one). Then there was Princeton. A place I could only describe as a paradise for the intellect.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“Rowdiness and irreverence seemed to be the norm among the kids. Even from behind a still-towering language barrier, I knew I’d never seen students talk to teachers the way Americans did. But what astonished me most was how the informalities appeared to cut both ways. Their dynamic was often adversarial, but jocular as well. Even warm. On an otherwise imposing first day, I instantly knew one thing: I would love American teachers.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“Research triggered the same feeling I got as a child exploring the mountains surrounding Chengdu with my father, when we’d spot a butterfly we’d never seen before, or happen upon a new variety of stick insect. Time lost its meaning in the lab, and I lost myself in the work. After an adolescence spent feeling as if I never really belonged, I was suddenly certain I’d found my place.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“I packed my schedule as densely as I could, immersing myself in math and physics, scouring corkboard advertisements for lectures and workshops, and checking out stacks of books from the library. I even developed a habit of wandering into the afternoon tea held for the staff at the Institute for Advanced Study every Friday.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“There were moments that I had to step back and simply watch. These were the people I grew up with in China: strong, resourceful, impressive. It’d been far too long since I’d seen them. I was proud to witness their return.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“The result was a kind of service that bordered on clairvoyance as far as our customers were concerned. She was the daughter of a Kuomintang family, born on the wrong side of the Cultural Revolution and plunged into a lifelong exile of the mind. Now, she was the friendliest face in New Jersey dry cleaning.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“Finally, there was a then-obscure astrophysicist named Professor Tyson—Neil deGrasse Tyson, as the world would later know him. His flamboyant teaching style was infectious, made even more potent by the affability that would become his trademark.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“Despite the near squalor of my mother’s life in America, and the menial work that seemed to have claimed her every waking moment since our arrival, she remained steadfast that my passion for science was not to be ignored.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“The final months of my senior year were probably the first time I’d felt anything resembling self-confidence since I’d arrived in America. Mr. Sabella’s mentorship helped me rediscover a sense of dignity and reminded me that friendship—trust—was possible for outsiders, too.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“Whereas teachers in Chengdu seemed to want little more than for me to blend in, I began to sense Mr. Sabella was challenging me in a different way. He wanted me to stand out. No one owes you anything, he seemed to be saying. If you want an A so badly, you can work harder for it next time. I can’t pretend I was ready to receive that kind of wisdom, but I had to acknowledge, reluctantly, that there was probably something to it.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“Hubel and Wiesel’s epiphany was that perception doesn’t occur in a single layer of neurons, but across many, organized in a hierarchy that begins with the recognition of superficial details and ends with complex, high-level awareness.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“Like Einstein honing his ideas after a long shift in the patent office, these early thinkers took the first steps toward a new world on the margins of busy careers, exploring the early days of AI with a genuine sense of adventure. That connection to physics, in fact, was more than a thematic one; although many of AI’s founding contributors would go on to explore an eclectic range of fields, including psychology and cognitive science, their backgrounds were almost exclusively centered on mathematics, electrical engineering, and physics itself.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“Although it had taken more than a half century for the necessary preconditions to align—historic milestones in the evolution of algorithms, large-scale data, and raw computing power, all converging at the dawn of the 2010s—it took less than a half decade for the capabilities they unleashed to change the world.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“Ironically, being an ESL student made it easy for me to speak up. I continued to need so many words and English-language concepts explained that isolated questions became an ongoing dialogue. The more we spoke, the more I realized that he wasn’t anything like the teacher I’d overheard dismissing the intellectual capabilities of girls back in China, or the discouraging restaurant boss who’d all but mocked my love for reading. He could be terse and abrasive, but he never wrote me off the way others had. He was challenging me, and it was working.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI

“I was in a hurry to regain even a fraction of the scholastic footing I enjoyed in China, but language was a barrier that obstructed me at every turn. Frustration rose as I trudged through each assignment at an excruciating pace, rarely making it to the end of a sentence without having to appeal to a dictionary.”
― Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI