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

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.

Li, also the founding codirector of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute, said she values candidates’ experience and relationship with AI tools more than their educational background.

“When we interview a software engineer, I personally feel the degree they have matters less to us now,” Li said of the talent search process for her AI startup in an interview on The Tim Ferriss Show this week.

“Now, it’s more about what have you learned, what tools do you use, how quickly can you superpower yourself in using these tools—and a lot of these are AI tools,” she added. “What’s your mindset toward using these tools matter more to me.”

When discussing the broader impacts of AI on education and the labor market, Li said assessing qualified workers used to rely on which school job candidates graduated from and the degree they earned. But ...