Author: Dr. Fei-Fei Li in Conversation with Adam Lashinsky

Discover the story behind San Francisco’s 2025 One City One Book selection, The Worlds I See, as Dr. Fei-Fei Li sits down with technology journalist Adam Lashinsky. In this engaging conversation, Li reflects on her journey as an immigrant, scientist, and AI pioneer, sharing insights into her groundbreaking career and vision for a human-centered future of technology. Books sales and signing with Dr. Li will follow the event. Space limited. Seats available first come, first served.

In The Worlds I See, visionary computer scientist Li shares her remarkable journey from a childhood in China to becoming one of the most influential voices in artificial intelligence. As a teenager immigrating to the U.S. with her parents, Li faced the hardships of poverty, cultural displacement, and uncertainty—experiences that instilled in her a profound empathy and determination. Through education and relentless curiosity, she rose to shape the future of AI, becoming a trailblazer in a field often lacking in diversity. Li's memoir blends her personal story with insights into the scientific process, showing how her life experiences shaped her belief that technology must serve humanity.

Woven throughout the book are powerful themes of immigration, identity, mentorship and the ethical responsibilities of innovation. Li makes a passionate case for building technology with care, inclusion, and compassion, and she warns against the dangers of allowing AI to be driven solely by profit or power. Her reflections are both candid and hopeful, urging readers to consider not just what technology can do, but what it should do. The Worlds I See is a moving, thought-provoking memoir that invites readers to imagine a future where science and human values grow together.

Dr. Fei-Fei Li is the Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and Co-Director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute. She previously led Stanford’s AI Lab and served as Vice President at Google, where she was Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud. She is also Co-founder and CEO of World Labs, an AI company focused on spatial intelligence and generative AI.

Internationally recognized as one of the pioneers of modern artificial intelligence, Dr. Li is the inventor of ImageNet, a landmark project that helped launch the deep learning revolution. She has published more than 400 scientific papers and continues to shape the field through research in computer vision, machine learning, and AI for healthcare.

In addition to her scientific achievements, Dr. Li has advised national and international leaders on the ethical development of AI, from the U.S. Senate to the United Nations. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Adam Lashinsky is an award-winning journalist, bestselling author, and seasoned commentator with more than 30 years covering technology, finance, and global business. He is editor-at-large for the San Francisco Standard and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, with work also appearing in The Information, Airmail News, and Business Insider.

He is the former executive editor of Fortune Magazine, where he spent two decades covering Silicon Valley, venture capital, and Wall Street, and served as editorial director of Fortune Brainstorm Tech. Lashinsky has written two books, including the New York Times bestseller  Insider Apple: How America’s Most Admire—and Secretive—Company Really Works (2012) and Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination (2017), and is currently working on a biography of journalist William Safire.

Earlier in his career, he held positions at TheStreet.com, The San Jose Mercury News, and Crain’s Chicago Business, and in 1994 was a Henry Luce Scholar reporting for The Nikkei Weekly in Tokyo. A native of Chicago, Lashinsky is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and lives in San Francisco.