The People

This list includes pioneers, researchers, industry leaders, ethicists, and rising voices shaping the future of Artificial Intelligence.

🧠 Foundational Pioneers and Researchers

• Alan Turing– British mathematician and logician, considered the father of theoretical computer science and AI.
• Marvin Minsky– Co-founder of the MIT AI Laboratory; a pioneer in AI and cognitive science.
• John McCarthy– Coined the term “Artificial Intelligence” and organized the Dartmouth Conference in 1956, which is considered the birth of AI.
• Norbert Wiener– Mathematician and philosopher, known as the father of cybernetics, which laid the foundation for control systems and AI.
• Claude Shannon– Known as the father of information theory, which is fundamental to digital circuit design and telecommunications.
• Joseph Weizenbaum– Creator of ELIZA, one of the first natural language processing programs; a critic of AI’s potential misuse.
• Geoffrey Hinton– Known as the “Godfather of Deep Learning,” his work on neural networks has been foundational.
• Yann LeCun– Pioneer of convolutional neural networks; Chief AI Scientist at Meta.
• Yoshua Bengio– Co-recipient of the 2018 Turing Award alongside Hinton and LeCun; significant contributions to deep learning.
• Andrew Ng– Co-founder of Google Brain and Coursera; influential in online AI education.
• Fei-Fei Li– Co-director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute; known for ImageNet project leader.
• Stuart Russell– UC Berkeley professor; co-author of “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach”; AI safety expert.
• Timnit Gebru– Co-founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute; advocate for ethical AI and diversity.
• Ian Goodfellow– Inventor of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), a breakthrough in generative modeling.
• Andrej Karpathy– Former Director of AI at Tesla; known for work in deep learning and computer vision.
• Ilya Sutskever– Co-founder and former chief scientist at OpenAI; co-invented AlexNet.
• Ashish Vaswani– Co-author of “Attention Is All You Need,” introducing the Transformer model, foundational for models like GPT.
• Daphne Koller– Co-founder of Coursera and Insitro; significant contributions to machine learning and computational biology.(Time)
• Douglas Hofstadter– Author of “Gödel, Escher, Bach”; explores consciousness and AI.
• Ray Kurzweil– Futurist and inventor; known for predictions about AI and the concept of the singularity.

🔝 Back to Top

🏢 Industry Leaders and Innovators

• Sam Altman– CEO of OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT and GPT-4.
• Demis Hassabis– CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind; known for AlphaGo and AlphaFold.
• Dario Amodei– CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, focusing on AI safety and research.
• Jensen Huang– CEO of NVIDIA, whose GPUs are critical for AI model training.
• Sundar Pichai– CEO of Alphabet and Google; overseeing AI integration across Google’s products.
• Satya Nadella– CEO of Microsoft; leading AI initiatives and partnerships, including with OpenAI.
• Elon Musk– Co-founder of OpenAI and founder of xAI; known for his views on AI’s future.
• Mark Zuckerberg– CEO of Meta; driving AI research and applications in social media and virtual reality.
• Clement Delangue– CEO of Hugging Face, a company democratizing AI through open-source models.
• Lisa Su– CEO of AMD; advancing AI hardware and computing capabilities.
• Arvind Krishna– CEO of IBM; focusing on AI and hybrid cloud technologies.
• Masayoshi Son– CEO of SoftBank; significant investor in AI technologies.(Wikipedia)
• Steve Huffman– CEO of Reddit; integrating AI for content moderation and user engagement.
• Victor Riparbelli– CEO of Synthesia; leading in AI-generated video content.
• Dan Neely– CEO of Vermillio; innovating in AI-driven marketing solutions.(Time)
• Aravind Srinivas– CEO of Perplexity; developing AI-powered search engines.(Time)
• Daphne Koller– CEO of Insitro; applying AI to drug discovery and development.(Time)
• Brett Adcock– Founder of Figure; creating humanoid robots powered by AI.
• Zack Dvey-Aharon– CEO of AEYE Health; leveraging AI for ophthalmology diagnostics.

🔝 Back to Top

⚖️ AI Ethics, Policy, and Advocacy

• Meredith Whittaker– President of Signal Foundation; former Google employee; AI policy advocate.
• Abeba Birhane– Researcher focusing on the ethical implications of AI and algorithmic bias.
• Joy Buolamwini– Founder of the Algorithmic Justice League; works on combating bias in AI systems.
• Chris Olah– Co-founder of Anthropic; known for work in AI interpretability and safety.
• Sara Hooker– Head of Cohere for AI; focuses on AI research and community building.
• Elizabeth Kelly– Director of the U.S. AI Safety Institute; involved in AI policy and regulation.
• Helen Toner– Former OpenAI board member; involved in AI policy and ethics.
• Cari Tuna– President of Open Philanthropy; supports AI safety and ethics initiatives.
• Beth Barnes– Founder and Head of Research at METR; focuses on AI alignment.
• Jade Leung– CTO of the UK’s AI Safety Institute; leads safety evaluations for frontier AI models. (Wikipedia)
• Amba Kak– Co-executive director of the AI Now Institute; advocates for inclusive AI governance. (Time)
• Alaa Murabit– Physician and activist; recognized for contributions to global security and AI ethics. (Wikipedia)

🔝 Back to Top

🌟 Emerging Voices, Diverse Contributors & Cultural Figures

Up-and-coming individuals and those bringing unique perspectives to AI:

• Francesca Mani– 15-year-old advocate for protections against deepfakes; featured in TIME100 AI.
• Rediet Abebe– Computer scientist focusing on algorithms and social justice.
• Rana el Kaliouby– Pioneer in emotion AI; co-founder of Affectiva.
• Jeremy Howard– Co-founder of fast.ai; promotes accessible AI education.
• Pelonomi Moiloa– CEO of Lelapa AI; focuses on AI solutions for African contexts.
• Sasha Luccioni– AI & Climate Lead at Hugging Face; works on sustainable AI.(Time)
• Beth Barnes– Founder and Head of Research at METR; focuses on AI alignment.(Time)
• Kristen DiCerbo– Chief Learning Officer at Khan Academy; integrates AI in education.(Time)
• Sarah Cardell– CEO of the UK Competition and Markets Authority; involved in AI regulation.(Time)
• Becky Pringle– President of the National Education Association; advocates for AI in education.

• Chinasa T. Okolo– Researcher advising on AI policy in the Global South. (Wikipedia)
• King Willonius– Comedian and filmmaker; explores AI’s role in creative expression. (Time)
• Refik Anadol– Artist integrating AI in visual art performances.
• Scarlett Johansson– Actress involved in discussions about AI and voice replication.
• Grimes– Musician experimenting with AI in music creation.
• Will Smith– Actor who has publicly engaged with AI themes in media.
• Taylor Swift– Singer-songwriter; her work has been subject to AI-generated content discussions.
• Sougwen Chung– Artist integrating AI in visual art performances.
• Stephanie Dinkins– Artist exploring AI and race through interactive installations.
• Holly Herndon– Musician using AI to create and manipulate vocals.

🔝 Back to Top