ARTIFICIAL intelligence pioneer Fei-Fei Li has warned that growing public scepticism towards AI in the United States could undermine the country’s technological leadership and have repercussions for the global development of the technology.
Li said US technologists had a responsibility to do more to demonstrate the economic and social benefits of AI, arguing that America’s approach would influence how other countries view and adopt the technology.
“The US is such an important country in terms of its impact to the world,” Li told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang in an interview on The Circuit. “If we are not showing a positive attitude and positive path toward AI, everybody loses.”
She said the United States should act as a “role model” by demonstrating the “incredible economic value” that AI can create.
Her comments come as communities across the US increasingly push back against the construction of data centres powering AI services, with concerns centred on their heavy consumption of electricity and water.
Public attitudes towards AI have also become more cautious, with about half of Americans saying they are more concerned than excited about the growing use of AI in their daily lives, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
Li said the contrast with many Asian countries, where public attitudes towards AI are generally more positive, could partly be explained by greater emphasis on technology in early education.
“In addition to being a scientist, I’m also an educator and a scholar, so I take it sometimes upon myself thinking that we’ve done a bad job communicating with the public,” she said.
Li has been one of the key figures in the development of modern AI. She was part of the team behind ImageNet, a landmark database containing millions of images that helped drive major advances in computer vision and machine learning.
She later founded World Labs, an AI startup developing so-called world models designed to help machines understand and interact with three-dimensional environments.
Li said the technology could eventually support advances in robotics, healthcare, education and other sectors.
World Labs raised US$1 billion (RM4.04 billion) in a funding round in February, underscoring investor interest in AI systems capable of understanding the physical world.
Li’s remarks highlight a growing challenge for the US AI industry: sustaining rapid technological development while addressing public concerns over energy and water consumption, economic disruption and the broader societal impact of increasingly powerful AI systems. - August 21, 2026
