In Tanner Lecture, AI expert to examine ‘What We See and What We Value’

Fei-Fei Li, a renowned expert in artificial intelligence (AI) and co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), will deliver the 2022 Tanner Lecture on Artificial Intelligence and Human Values next week at Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center.

During the lecture, titled “What We See and What We Value: AI with a Human Perspective,” Li will discuss a series of AI projects — from her work on ambient intelligence in health care to household robots — to examine the relationship between visual and artificial intelligence. She will explore the social and ethical dimensions of developing algorithms that enable computers to see what humans see — as well as what they don’t see.

The event will begin at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 26 in the lower-level auditorium of the Humanities Quadrangle (HQ L02), located at 320 York St. in New Haven. The event is free and open to the public.

Li is the Sequoia Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University and Denning Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, a multidisciplinary institute that advances AI research, education, policy, and practice to improve the human condition.

During a sabbatical leave in 2017–18, she served as a vice president at Google and chief scientist of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning at Google Cloud. She co-founded the national nonprofit AI4ALL, which trains K-12 students from underprivileged communities to become future leaders in AI. Li also serves on the National AI Research Resource Task Force commissioned by Congress and the White House and is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Her talk is part of a special series, Tanner Lectures on Artificial Intelligence and Human Values, being held at seven universities during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 academic years. The other universities participating in the series are Stanford; University of California-Berkeley; University of Utah; University of Michigan; Oxford University; and Cambridge University.

The series is part of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Established in 1976, the Tanner Lectures on Human Values seek to advance and reflect upon the scholarly and scientific learning relating to human values. The lectures are permanently sponsored at nine institutions, including Yale. The lectures are funded by an endowment received by the University of Utah from Obert Clark Tanner and Grace Adams Tanner.

The lectureship embraces the deep humanistic values and interests of the Tanners. Grace Adams Tanner’s interests drew her toward biology and anthropology, where she contributed generously, while Obert Clark Tanner joined the faculty of philosophy at the University of Utah, where he focused on moral philosophy and philosophy of religion.