Revolution in the making

Commenting on the recent debate on whether AI will one day replace human intelligence, Li says the threat is overblown.

She cites a famous saying from the 1970s to clarify her view: The definition of today's AI is a computer that can make a perfect chess move while the room is on fire.

This means AI can accomplish plenty, such as memorizing 3,000 car models, but it doesn't understand the environment and context of every scenario, says Li.

"As a scientist, I want to keep the humbleness when I think about AI as a science as well as a technology," says Li. "So it's important to recognize AI as a very young field. It still has a lot of open questions and challenges."

However, AI can play an important role in many areas with more human-machine cooperation, says Li.

Referring to the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake and 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, she says robots would have been more practical as a replacement to humans undertaking dangerous disaster relief work.

Smart machines can also assist human beings in repetitive labor, Li says.

For example, doctors can only diagnose a limited number of medical images, but machines can process a lot more at a likely lower cost and within a shorter time. This would allow doctors to conduct more valuable research and communicate more with patients, work that can't be done by AI.

"Machines don't have independent value," says Li. "The value of machines is the value of human beings."