Google, Facebook, and Microsoft Are Remaking Themselves Around AI

Fei-Fei Li is a big deal in the world of AI. As the director of the Artificial Intelligence and Vision labs at Stanford University, she oversaw the creation of ImageNet, a vast database of images designed to accelerate the development of AI that can "see." And, well, it worked, helping to drive the creation of deep learning systems that can recognize objects, animals, people, and even entire scenes in photos--technology that has become commonplace on the world's biggest photo-sharing sites. Now, Fei-Fei will help run a brand new AI group inside Google, a move that reflects just how aggressively the world's biggest tech companies are remaking themselves around this breed of artificial intelligence. Alongside a former Stanford researcher--Jia Li, who more recently ran research for the social networking service Snapchat--the China-born Fei-Fei will lead a team inside Google's cloud computing operation, building online services that any coder or company can use to build their own AI.