The ‘godmother of AI’ has a new startup already worth $1 billion

Fei-Fei Li, nan renowned machine intelligence known arsenic nan “godmother of AI,” has created a startup dubbed World Labs. In conscionable 4 months, its already weighted astatine much than $1 billion, the Financial Times reported.

World Labs hopes to usage human-like processing of ocular information to make AI tin of precocious reasoning, Reuters reported successful May. The investigation to make it human-like, overmuch for illustration what ChatGPT is trying to do pinch generative AI, is still ongoing.

Li is champion known for her contributions to machine vision, a branch of AI dedicated to helping machines construe and comprehend ocular information. She besides spearheaded nan improvement of ImageNet, an extended ocular database utilized for ocular entity nickname research. Li headed AI astatine Google Cloud from 2017 to 2018 and presently advises nan White House task unit connected AI.

“[World Labs] is processing a exemplary that understands nan three-dimensional beingness world; fundamentally nan dimensions of objects, wherever things are and what they do,” an anonymous task capitalist pinch knowledge of Li’s activity told nan Financial Times.

The startup has had 2 backing rounds, nan latest was astir $100 million, and it’s backed by Andreessen Horowitz and nan AI money Radical Ventures (which Li joined arsenic a partner past year). Li founded World Labs while connected partial time off from Stanford, wherever she co-directs nan university’s Human-Centered AI Institute.

In a Ted Talk successful April, Li further explained nan section of investigation her startup will activity connected advancing, which involves algorithms tin of realistically extrapolating images and matter into three-dimensional environments and acting connected those predictions, utilizing a conception known arsenic “spatial intelligence.” This could bolster activity successful various fields specified arsenic robotics, augmented reality, virtual reality, and machine vision. If these capabilities proceed to beforehand successful nan eager ways Li plans, it has nan imaginable to toggle shape industries for illustration healthcare and manufacturing.

The finance successful World Labs reflects a inclination wherever task capitalists eagerly align themselves pinch eager AI companies, spurred by nan astonishment occurrence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which quickly achieved a valuation exceeding $80 billion.