Kai-Fu Lee facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Kai-Fu Lee
|
|
|---|---|
| 李開復 | |
Kai-Fu Lee in December 2007
|
|
| Born | December 3, 1961 (age 63) |
| Citizenship | Taiwanese American (until 2011) |
| Education | Columbia University (BS) Carnegie Mellon University (PhD) |
| Occupation |
|
| Known for |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
| Thesis | Large-vocabulary speaker-independent continuous speech recognition: The SPHINX system (1988) |
| Doctoral advisor | Raj Reddy |
Kai-Fu Lee (born December 3, 1961) is a famous Taiwanese businessman, computer scientist, investor, and writer. He is known for his work with big tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google. He also helps new companies grow. Today, he lives in Beijing, China.
Lee has held important jobs at many tech giants. He was a leader at Apple, then SGI, Microsoft, and Google. In 2005, he was part of a legal case between Google and Microsoft. This happened because he had signed an agreement with Microsoft not to work for a competing company for one year.
He has played a big role in the Chinese internet world. He started Microsoft Research Asia in 1998 and led it until 2000. From 2005 to 2009, he was the president of Google China. After leaving Google, he started Sinovation Ventures, a company that invests in new businesses. He also created a website called Wǒxuéwǎng to help young Chinese people with their studies and careers. He is very popular on Sina Weibo, a Chinese social media site, with over 50 million followers.
In his 2018 book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, Lee talks about how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the world. He believes China is quickly becoming a global leader in AI. He also says that AI, even with all its power, will never be able to truly create new things or feel emotions like humans do.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Kai-Fu Lee was born in Taipei, Taiwan. His father, Li Tianmin, was a historian and a lawmaker from Sichuan, China. Lee wrote about his life and career in his book, Making a World of Difference, which came out in 2011.
In 1973, Lee moved to the United States. He went to Oak Ridge High School in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He then studied computer science at Columbia University, earning his bachelor's degree in 1983. Later, he earned his PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1988.
Lee was born a Taiwanese citizen. He also became a U.S. citizen when he was young. In 2011, he decided to give up his U.S. citizenship and keep only his Taiwanese nationality. He said he wanted to "get back to his roots" as he got older.
Kai-Fu Lee's Career Journey
Academic Research and Early Work
At Carnegie Mellon University, Kai-Fu Lee studied machine learning and pattern recognition. In 1986, he helped create a computer system called Bill that played the game Othello. This system won a national computer tournament in 1989. In 1988, he finished his PhD work on Sphinx. He says this was the first system that could understand continuous speech from different speakers.
Lee has written two books and over 60 papers about speech recognition. His PhD work was published as a book called Automatic Speech Recognition: The Development of the Sphinx Recognition System.
Working at Apple, SGI, and Microsoft
After teaching at Carnegie Mellon for two years, Lee joined Apple Computer in 1990. At Apple, he led teams that worked on new technologies. These included PlainTalk, a speech system, and GalaTea, a text-to-speech system for Mac computers.
In 1996, Lee moved to Silicon Graphics (SGI). He spent a year as a Vice President in their web products division. Then, he became president of their multimedia software division, Cosmo Software.
In 1998, Lee joined Microsoft and moved to Beijing, China. He was very important in starting Microsoft Research (MSR) there. MSR China later became known as Microsoft Research Asia. It is now considered one of the best computer science research labs in the world. Lee returned to the United States in 2000. He was promoted to corporate vice president at Microsoft, a role he held until 2005.
Moving from Microsoft to Google
In July 2005, Kai-Fu Lee left Microsoft to work at Google. Google offered him a very large payment, including a $2.5 million bonus just for joining. This was a huge deal at Google.
On July 19, 2005, Microsoft sued Google and Lee. Microsoft said that Lee was breaking an agreement he had signed. This agreement said he could not work for a competing company for one year after leaving Microsoft. Microsoft argued that Lee would share secret information with Google if he was allowed to work there.
A judge first stopped Lee from working on Google projects that competed with Microsoft. But later, on September 13, the judge allowed Lee to work for Google. He could hire people and talk to government officials in China. However, he could not work on certain technical projects like search or speech recognition until the case went to trial. He also could not set budgets or research plans for Google in China.
Before the trial, on December 22, 2005, Google and Microsoft settled their dispute. The details of the settlement were kept private.
At Google China, Lee helped the company grow in the Chinese market. He launched the Google.cn website for the region. He also built strong teams of engineers and scientists there.
On September 4, 2009, Lee announced he was leaving Google. He said it was a good time to move on because Google China had a strong leadership team. Alan Eustace, a senior Google vice-president, praised Lee for improving Google's services in China. A few months after Lee left, Google decided to stop censoring its search results in mainland China.
Starting Sinovation Ventures
Kai-Fu Lee is also an active investor. He helps new high-tech companies get started and grow around the world.
On September 7, 2009, he announced a new investment fund called "Innovation Works." This fund, later renamed "Sinovation Ventures", started with $115 million. It aims to help five successful Chinese start-ups each year. These start-ups are in areas like internet, mobile internet, and cloud computing. Many investors joined the fund, including Steve Chen (co-founder of YouTube) and Foxconn.
In September 2010, Lee talked about two Google Android projects for Chinese users. These were Tapas, a smartphone system for Chinese users, and Wandoujia (SnapPea), a desktop phone manager for Android.
By December 2012, Innovation Works had raised another $275 million. In September 2016, the company changed its name to "Sinovation Ventures." It also raised $674 million more. This brought their total funds to over $1 billion. By April 2018, Sinovation Ventures had over $2 billion in total funds and had invested in over 300 companies, mostly in China.
Founding 01.AI
In March 2023, Lee started a new company called 01.AI. This artificial intelligence startup focuses on building Large Language Models (LLMs) for the Chinese market. In November 2023, the company released its first LLM, called Yi-34B.
Previous Important Roles
Kai-Fu Lee has held many important positions throughout his career:
- Vice President at Google; President of Google Greater China (2005–2009)
- Corporate Vice President, Natural Interactive Services Division (NISD) at Microsoft Corp. (2000–2005)
- Founder and Managing Director of Microsoft Research Asia, China (1998–2000)
- President of Cosmo Software, a multimedia software business unit of Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) (1999–2000)
- Vice President and General Manager, Web Products at Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) (1998–1999)
- Vice President, Interactive Media Group at Apple Computer (1997–1998)
- Director, Interactive Media, Advanced Technology Group at Apple Computer (1994–1997)
- Manager, Speech & Language Technologies Group at Apple Computer (1991–1994)
- Principal Speech Scientist at Apple Computer (1990–1991)
- Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University (1990)
- Research Computer Scientist at Carnegie Mellon University (1988–1990)
Awards and Recognition
Kai-Fu Lee has received many honors for his work:
- Chairman of the World Economic Forum's Global AI Council
- Named Asia House Asian Business Leader in 2018
- Became a Fellow of IEEE in 2002
- Member of the Committee of 100
- Listed in Time 100 in 2013
- Received Honorary Doctorate Degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and City University of Hong Kong
Personal Life
On September 5, 2013, Kai-Fu Lee shared on Weibo that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma, a type of cancer. In December 2018, he spoke about his experience. He said that he used to be a "maniacal workaholic." This changed suddenly about five years before, when he found out he had Stage IV lymphoma.
See also
In Spanish: Kai-Fu Lee para niños
