‘Godmother of AI’ says degrees are less important in hiring than how quickly you can ‘superpower yourself’ with new tools

Fei-Fei Li, the "Godmother of AI," says she values AI skills more than college degrees when hiring software engineers for her tech startup. (Credit: Chris J. Ratcliffe—Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Founders of AI startups in Silicon Valley are valuing degrees less and seeking out candidates who can work quickly, adapt, and build AI models.

Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford professor and CEO of AI startup World Labs, is known as the “Godmother of AI” for her work building a large-scale database of labeled images, which changed the way computers comprehend digital images and videos.