Fei-Fei Li, the esteemed 'godmother' of AI, expressed her pride in being the sole woman among seven pioneers of artificial intelligence, as she was presented with the prestigious 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering by the King. This recognition highlights her groundbreaking contributions to modern machine learning, a field pivotal to AI's rapid evolution. Li's work on ImageNet, a project revolutionizing computer vision, has been instrumental in creating large-scale image recognition datasets, paving the way for AI's data-driven advancements. She envisions the next AI milestone as interactive AI, which could unlock human superpowers in creativity, robotic learning, design, and architecture. The ceremony marks the first time all seven laureates gather in person, despite differing views on AI's potential dangers. While some, like Dr. Hinton, express concerns about AI's 'extinction-level threat', others, like Prof. LeCun, argue against apocalyptic warnings. Li advocates for a pragmatic approach, emphasizing healthy debate and science-based communication in AI discourse. The Queen Elizabeth Prize, awarded annually for global engineering breakthroughs, further underscores the importance of these pioneers' work, with past recipients including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web.
