AI Godmother: Proud to Be Different

The AI Pioneers: Celebrating Innovation and Challenging Perspectives

It's not every day you hear about a "godmother" of artificial intelligence, but Professor Fei-Fei Li is making headlines for exactly that reason. She's proudly standing as the sole woman among seven AI pioneers receiving the prestigious 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering from King Charles III. This ceremony, held at St James's Palace, really highlights the incredible advancements in machine learning that are shaping our world.

Professor Li joins some truly impactful figures in the field, including Professor Yoshua Bengio, Dr Bill Dally, Dr Geoffrey Hinton, Professor John Hopfield, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, and Meta's chief AI scientist Dr Yann LeCun. Their collective work has fundamentally driven the rapid evolution of modern AI.

Who's Who in the World of AI?

You might have heard of the "godfathers of AI" – a title often given to Dr Hinton, Professor Bengio, and Yann LeCun. They collectively earned this moniker after being awarded the Turing Award in 2018. But when it comes to a "godmother," there's really only one, and that's Professor Li.

Interestingly, she didn't initially embrace the title. She told the BBC she had to "pause and recognise" that turning it down would mean missing a significant opportunity. "If I rejected this, it would miss an opportunity for women scientists and technologists to be recognised this way," she explained, pointing out that men are "pretty easily called godfathers or founding fathers." For the sake of "all the young women I work with and the generations of girls to come," she's now happy to accept it. It's a powerful statement about representation in STEM, isn't it?

The Genius Behind ImageNet

Professor Li, who emigrated from China to the US as a teenager, is now the co-director of Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute and co-founder and CEO of World Labs. Her most celebrated contribution, and the reason for much of this recognition, is her groundbreaking work on ImageNet.

Imagine trying to teach a computer to 'see' and understand images. That's essentially what ImageNet achieved. Professor Li and her students meticulously created vast, large-scale image recognition datasets. These datasets became the fundamental building blocks upon which much of today's AI technology is constructed, essentially paving the way for modern computer vision. As she puts it, this dataset "opened the floodgate of data-driven AI." For more on the foundational aspects of AI, you might find our article on the deliberating on the many definitions of Artificial General Intelligence insightful.

Looking ahead, Professor Li believes the next big leap in AI will come when it can genuinely interact with its environment. She sees this as an "innately important and native" ability for animals and humans. If AI could truly achieve this, she believes it could "superpower" human capabilities in countless ways, from boosting creativity and robotic learning to revolutionising design and architecture. This vision of AI interacting with its environment aligns with discussions around AI with Empathy for Humans.

Healthy Disagreements and Pragmatic Approaches

This award ceremony marks a rare occasion where all seven laureates will be together in person. It's particularly interesting given some of the public debates surrounding AI's future. For instance, the three "godfathers" hold quite different views on the potential dangers of AI.

1. Dr Hinton has repeatedly voiced serious concerns, even suggesting AI could pose an "extinction-level threat."
2. In stark contrast, Professor LeCun at Meta believes these apocalyptic warnings are largely "overblown."

Professor Li takes a more "pragmatic approach," viewing this disagreement among scientists as "healthy." She told the BBC:

"We're used to even disagreement, and I think that's healthy. A topic as profound and impactful as AI requires a lot of healthy debate and public discourse."

She's concerned by extreme rhetoric from both sides of the argument. Her preference is for a "science-based, pragmatic method" when communicating about AI. She hopes to see the public discourse around AI become "much more moderated and grounded in facts and science instead of the extreme rhetorics." It's a call for balance and reason, which feels incredibly important right now. Such debates are crucial for developing responsible AI, a topic often discussed in relation to Taiwan’s AI Law Is Quietly Redefining What “Responsible Innovation” Means.

A Prize for Global Benefit

The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering is awarded annually to engineers whose groundbreaking innovations have a global impact, benefiting humanity. Past recipients include Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the visionary credited with creating the World Wide Web. For more information on the prize and its laureates, you can visit the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering website.

Lord Vallance, who chairs the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation, aptly summed it up, stating that these winners "represent the very best of engineering." Their work, he added, "demonstrates how engineering can both sustain our planet and transform the way we live and learn." It's a fitting tribute to a group of individuals who are truly shaping our future.