Teaching AI to Understand the Physical World, with Dr. Fei-Fei Li of World Labs
Teaching AI to Understand the Physical World, with Dr. Fei-Fei Li of World Labs  
Podcast: No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
Published On: Thu Jun 05 2025
Description: In this episode of No Priors, Sarah and Elad are joined by Dr. Fei-Fei Li, AI pioneer, co-director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute, and founder of World Labs. Fei-Fei shares why she’s building at the intersection of embodiment and intelligence, and what today’s AI systems are still missing. From the early days of ImageNet to her vision for the next generation of robotics, she unpacks the human and technical motivations behind World Labs. They also discuss the challenges of 3D world modeling, her approach to building exceptional teams, and the special qualities that have led her students like Andrej Karpathy to make major breakthroughs. Show Notes: 0:00 Why and what Dr. Fei-Fei Li is building 3:00 World models at World Labs 6:44 Missing gaps in the AI future 9:16 Robotics and physical intelligence 16:15 Greatest challenges of 3D 19:08 Fei-Fei’s work in PhD in ImageNet 23:05 Special moments in Dr. Li's career 29:33 Building teams 32:05 Human-centered AI