Godmother of AI Tells Millennials to Stop Treating Jobs Like Quantum Physics

KEY POINTS

•Fei-Fei Li, Stanford professor and World Labs CEO, urged young AI talent to prioritize passion over detail obsession on Lenny's Podcast Sunday.
•She founded World Labs in 2024 aiming to build AI that perceives and interacts with 3D environments.
•Chinese AI lab DeepSeek's founder Liang Wenfeng emphasized creativity and passion over experience for long-term success.
•LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky added that adaptability, not fancy degrees, will define future workforce winners as AI integrates into workplaces.

Fei-Fei Li, Stanford CS professor and World Labs CEO, dropped a sanity bomb on young AI hopefuls on 'Lenny’s Podcast' Sunday. She confessed she’s stuck in perpetual mentoring mode because these brainy whippersnappers dissect every job detail like it’s an ImageNet challenge. Founded World Labs last year to teach AI to live in 3D (because flat AI is so 2023), she joked that passion, mission, and team faith beat obsessing over tiny job particulars. Meanwhile, China’s DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng and LinkedIn’s Ryan Roslansky doubled down: soft skills and adaptability > shiny degrees or experience. Basically, the future of AI jobs is less spreadsheet, more feelings.