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A12 TECHNOLOGY
Thursday 28 december 2023

AI pioneer says public discourse on

intelligent machines must give ‘proper

respect to human agency’

By MATT O’BRIEN
AP Technology Writer
She’s an important figure
behind today’s artificial
intelligence boom, but
not all computer scientists
thought Fei-Fei Li was on
the right track when she
came up with the idea for
a giant visual database
called ImageNet that took
years to build.
Li, now a founding director
of Stanford University’s Insti-
tute for Human-Centered
Artificial Intelligence, is out (Associated Press Illustration/Peter Hamlin)
with a new memoir that re-
counts her pioneering work
in curating the dataset that ing, objects because the and painting is not genera-
accelerated the computer world is made of objects. tive for normal humans. We
vision branch of AI. Human vision is grounded need the Van Goghs of
The book, “The World I in our understanding of ob- the world.
See,” also portrays her for- jects. And there are many, Q: What do you think most
mative years that abruptly many, many of them. Ima- people want from intelli-
shifted from China to New geNet is really an attempt gent machines and is that
Jersey and follows her to define the problem of aligned with what scientists
through academia, Silicon object recognition and and tech companies are
Valley and the halls of Con- also to provide a path to building?
gress as growing commer- solve it, which is the big A: I think fundamentally
cialization of AI technol- data path. people want dignity and
ogy brought public atten- Q: If I could time travel a good life. That’s almost
tion and a backlash. She back 15 years ago when the founding principle of
spoke with The Associated you’re hard at work on our country. Machines and
Press about the book and ImageNet and told you tech should be aligned
the current AI moment. The about DALL-E, Stable Dif- with universal human val-
interview has been edited fusion, Google Gemini and ues dignity and a better
for length and clarity. ChatGPT what would most life, including freedom and
Q: Your book describes surprise you? all of those things. Some-
how you envisioned Ima- A: What does not surprise times when we talk about
geNet as more than just a me is that everything you tech or sometimes when
huge data set. Can you mention DALL-E, Chat- we build tech, whether
explain? GPT, Gemini is large-data it’s intended or unintend-
A: ImageNet really is the based. They are pretrained ed, we don’t talk enough
quintessential story of iden- on a large amount of data. about that. When I say
tifying the North Star of an That’s exactly what I was ‘we,’ it includes technolo-
AI problem and then find- hoping for. What surprised gists, it includes businesses,
ing a way to get there. The me is we got to genera- but also includes journal-
North Star for me was to tive AI faster than most of ists. It’s our collective re-
really rethink how we can us thought. Generation for sponsibility.
solve the problem of visual humans is actually not that Q: What are the biggest
intelligence. One of the easy. Most of us are not misconceptions about AI?
most fundamental prob- natural artists. The easiest A: The biggest miscon-
lems in visual intelligence generation for humans are ception of AI in journalism
is understanding, or see- words because speaking is when journalists use the
is generative, but drawing subject AI and a verb and
put humans in the object.
Human agency is very,
very important. We create
technology, we deploy
technology, and we gov-
ern technology. The media
and the public discourse,
but heavily influenced by
media, is talking about AI
without the proper respect
to human agency.q