Founders of AI startups in Silicon Valley are valuing degrees less and seeking out candidates who can work quickly, adapt, and build AI models.<\/p>\n
Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford professor and CEO of AI startup World Labs<\/a>, is known as the \u201cGodmother of AI\u201d for her work building a large-scale database<\/a> of labeled images, which changed the way computers comprehend digital images and videos.<\/p>\n Li, also the founding codirector of Stanford\u2019s Human-Centered AI Institute, said she values candidates\u2019 experience and relationship with AI tools more than their educational background.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we interview a software engineer, I personally feel the degree they have matters less to us now,\u201d Li said<\/a> of the talent search process for her AI startup in an interview on The Tim Ferriss Show this week.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, it\u2019s more about what have you learned, what tools do you use, how quickly can you superpower yourself in using these tools\u2014and a lot of these are AI tools,\u201d she added. \u201cWhat\u2019s your mindset toward using these tools matter more to me.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u201cthat will be changing with AI being at the fingertip of so many people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n For her own talent acquisition, Li added that she wouldn\u2019t hire software engineers who don\u2019t \u201cembrace AI collaborative software tools.\u201d She explained this requirement is not because she believes AI software tools are perfect, but because she believes they show a person\u2019s ability to grow with fast-moving technologies and to use AI to their own benefit.<\/p>\n Li\u2019s view of AI skills and their value proposition compared with college degrees echoes a similar sentiment from other leaders in the industry.<\/p>\n In October, Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard dropout, said<\/a> skills outweigh a flashy college degree when hiring for Meta\u2014but he noted that entry-level roles at his company still require a bachelor\u2019s.<\/p>\n Palantir CEO Alex Karp has challenged the value of a college education<\/a> by recently launching a four-year paid internship for young entrepreneurs not enrolled in college to instead learn by doing and to \u201cskip the debt, skip the indoctrination<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As more tech leaders seek AI-fluent candidates, Li looks for those who can help realize her company\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n World Labs aims to build AI that can process and replicate the three-dimensional world through spatial reasoning\u2014a feat that would revolutionize the tech all over again. Li bootstrapped<\/a> the startup into a more than $1 billion valuation after only four months<\/a>, according to the Financial Times.<\/p>\n