‘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’...