Li: Major tech companies avoided the term AI in 2015 and 2016
Dr. Fei-Fei Li · The Godmother of AI on jobs, robots & why world models are next | Dr. Fei-Fei Li · Nov 16, 2025 · at 21:28
AI pioneer Dr. Fei-Fei Li discusses the historical stigma and industry perception surrounding artificial intelligence branding with host Lenny Rachitsky.
0:00 / 0:22exact quote · 22.6s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Like, I do remember the companies, the tech companies, I, I'm not gonna name names, but I will, I was in a conversation in one of the early days, I think it is in the middle of 2015, middle of 20 16 some tech companies avoid using the word AI because they were not sure if AI was a dirty word.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Dr. Fei-Fei Li
Li: AGI is more of a marketing term than a scientific one
“I feel AGI is more a marketing term than a scientific term. As a scientist and technologist, AI is my North Star, is my field's North Star, and I'm happy people call it whatever name they want to call it.”
Dr. Fei-Fei Li: Scaling laws alone are not enough; AI needs innovation
“I think scaling laws of more data, more GPUs and bigger current model architecture is there's still a lot to be done there, but I absolutely think we need to innovate more.”
Li: Self-driving cars on 2D surfaces are simpler than 3D robotics
“And self-driving cars are much simpler robots. They're just metal boxes running on two D surfaces. And the goal is not to touch anything. Robot is three D things running in three D world. And the goal is to touch things.”
Li: Spatial intelligence and world models are as important as LLMs
“We believe that spatial intelligence and world modeling is As important, if not more, to language models and complementary to language models.”