Fei-Fei Li recounts her immigration to the U.S. at 15, where early struggles gave way to academic opportunity, guided by a supportive high school teacher who helped her reach Princeton. Her AI journey began with a shift from physics to understanding machine perception, leading to the creation of ImageNet—a pivotal dataset that redefined AI training by emphasizing data scale over model complexity. Built using Amazon Mechanical Turk with rigorous quality controls, ImageNet exemplified collaborative science over lone genius narratives. Today, she champions spatial intelligence through World Labs, developing AI that understands 3D environments, with applications in film, robotics, and education. Unlike prevailing AI anxiety in the West, she notes more optimistic global perspectives, especially in Asia. As AI blurs digital and physical realities, she stresses its role as a civilizational force—reshaping economies, learning, and identity—and highlights the growing importance of self-directed learning in an age of intelligent machines.