李飞飞：高校学生应追逐AI“北极星”问题

Core Insights - The article highlights the journey of Fei-Fei Li from her early academic achievements to her current role as CEO of a company, emphasizing her passion for starting from scratch and building innovative solutions in AI [1][2][24]. Group 1: ImageNet and AI Development - ImageNet was conceived around 18 years ago to address the lack of data in AI and machine learning, particularly in computer vision, which was essential for the development of algorithms [4][6]. - The project aimed to download 1 billion images from the internet to create a global visual classification system, which became a cornerstone for training and testing machine learning algorithms [6][7]. - The breakthrough moment for ImageNet came in 2012 with the introduction of AlexNet, which utilized convolutional neural networks (CNN) and significantly reduced the error rate in image recognition tasks [8][10]. Group 2: Vision and Future of AI - Li emphasizes the importance of spatial intelligence for achieving general artificial intelligence (AGI), arguing that without it, AGI remains incomplete [14]. - The evolution of AI has progressed from object recognition to scene understanding and now to generating 3D worlds, which presents a new set of challenges [12][16]. - The integration of language models and visual understanding is seen as a critical area for future research and application, particularly in fields like robotics and the metaverse [20][21]. Group 3: Advice for Students and Researchers - Li advises students to pursue fundamental "North Star" problems in AI that are not necessarily tied to industrial applications, as academic resources have shifted significantly [34][35]. - She encourages interdisciplinary research in AI, particularly in scientific discovery, and highlights the importance of curiosity and problem-solving in graduate studies [38][39]. - The article underscores the need for a new generation of researchers who are fearless and willing to tackle complex challenges in AI [32][33].