It was a map of human meaning itself, uncompromising in both the scope of its reach and the veracity of its contents.

I was captivated by the idea of exploring the world through a more organic lens. After years of following the trail of physics to the outermost reaches of the universe, it was suddenly doubling back on itself, leading me to look inward for the first time—toward living bodies, beating hearts, and restless minds.

I wondered if it was really physics per se that so inspired me, or simply the spirit that motivated physics—the courage that spurred some of history’s brightest minds to ask such brazen questions about our world. I wanted desperately to follow in their footsteps—to help reveal some unknown truth—but I was no longer certain what kind of truth it’d b

If there’s a silver lining to periods of such opacity, however, when the world seems all but closed to scientific inquiry, it’s that the curious among us are at their most inventive.

My work with Arnie taught me two essential lessons: that the greatest triumphs of AI wouldn’t merely be scientific, but humanistic as well, and that achieving them would be impossible without help.

of the connections between them. They tapped into our millennia-old desire to understand the mind—indeed, to make sense of intelligence itself—wading further into abstraction than I’d ever ventured, all while they maintained an unmistakably humanistic thread. They exemplified the virtues of science—rigorous and hypothesis-driven—but without ever sa

Admittedly, my mother and her two sisters were my grandparents’ only children—three uniformly headstrong daughters and not a son in sight—so opportunities for chauvinism were limited long before I showed up. But their affection endured with the birth of my cousin—a boy, at last—and I never second-guessed it. It was only as I grew up that I realized

“You’ve spent years trying to get here, Fei-Fei. You’ve got the degree, you’ve got the job, and it sounds like you’ve got some inspiration. And hey, your husband is six hundred miles away, so you’ll definitely have the time.”

had a lot to be thankful for, but I was a walking symbol of the turbulence so common in early academic careers. I was somehow married, alone, and living with my parents, all at once.