Before Fei-Fei Li helped launch the modern era of artificial intelligence, she was running a dry-cleaning business in suburban New Jersey.
Li immigrated to the United States at 15, arriving with her parents in Parsippany, N.J., with little English or money. To get by, her parents worked cashier jobs and Li worked in Chinese restaurants. When her mother’s health declined just as Li entered college at Princeton, the family needed to find a way to “make some money to survive,” she told Bloomberg. So, they opened a dry-cleaning store.
