Brainz Magazine Exclusive Top List
2023 has seen AI exploding into every part of our lives, from finance and e-commerce to healthcare and education. Although AI has been around for a while (since 1951, to be precise), and most of us have been using it for many years, the release of astoundingly clever generative tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E has made it the hottest topic of the year so far.
Whether you believe AI is an exciting advancement for humankind to benefit from, or you suffer from AI- anxiety (concern about the dangers or negative consequences it could have on our lives), there's no denying that the experts are just getting started. We've rounded up the top AI changemakers currently making waves in this revolutionary industry that's showing no signs of stopping.
1 - Sam Altman
It is no surprise that the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research laboratory which developed ChatGPT, is at the top of this list. His company has recently been given a value of between $27 billion to $29 billion, but what’s just as remarkable is the speed at which his revolutionary chatbot has conquered the world with other big names in the AI industry still clambering to keep up. Altman has put his success and influence to good use already, making considerable investments into clean energy technologies and campaigning for world leaders to work together to address AI safety and regulation.
2 - Dr Sasha Luccioni
Dr Luccioni is a research scientist powerhouse, specializing in ethical and sustainable artificial intelligence at HuggingFace. Originally used by techy teenagers, HuggingFace has now evolved into a thriving online community where AI experts and enthusiasts can share open-sourced machine-learning models, meaning anyone can access and modify them for free. As a result, more than 10,000 organizations have created AI-powered tools for their businesses thanks to HuggingFace. As well as a Founding Member of Climate Change AI and a Board Member of Women in Machine Learning, Dr. Luccioni has been busy advancing our understanding of the societal and environmental impacts of AI.
3 - Dr. Srinivas Mukkamala
Dr. Srinivas Mukkamala was the founder and CEO of the infosec company RiskSense, before becoming Chief Product Officer of Ivanti when it acquired the company in August 2021. In addition to being a cyber security researcher and a neural network pioneer, he’s also a cutting-edge voice in AI. Dr. Mukkamala is also known for being part of the think tank that collaborated with the U.S. Department of Defense, and for his stance that AI poses both enormous opportunities and risks to our world. Echoing many other voices in the industry, he calls for an equal balance between innovation and the proper regulation of AI models.
4 - Professor Gary Marcus
Having set up two AI companies, this cognitive scientist is considered a leading expert in the industry and has regularly written for The New Yorker, Wired, and The New York Times on the subject. His fifth and most recent book, Rebooting AI, which he co-wrote with Ernest Davis, was listed in Forbes’s '7 Must Read Books in AI'. This dynamic best-selling author has recently turned his hand to podcasts, with his newly launched Humans vs Machines show creating a real buzz around the topic thanks to his highly curated line-up of guests.
5 - Demis Hassabis
Dr Demis Hassabis is a British artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur, and the founder and chief executive of Google DeepMind - one of the world’s leading neuroscience-inspired AI research labs. A former child chess prodigy, Demis completed his A-Levels two years early before developing video games at the age of 17 to considerable success. Following graduation from Cambridge University with a Double First in Computer Science, he founded the videogame company Elixir Studios, completed a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, and finally set up DeepMind in 2010. DeepMind's AI program AlphaGo shocked the world when it thwarted the human champion player in the board game Go. Hassabis continues to develop DeepMind's new system, Gemini, which he says will 'eclipse ChatGPT'.
6 - Dr. Naomi Saphra
Having cut her teeth interning for both Google and Facebook and graduating with a Ph.D. in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh in 2021, you wouldn't typically think that a sense of fun would go hand-in-hand with such an academic background. But Dr. Saphra also happens to be a stand-up comedian in her spare time and has been exploring how AI systems can mimic a human’s sense of humor. With a background in Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence, thrown together with her drive to understand what makes us laugh, we think she could be one to watch in the future.
7 - Oren Etzioni
Etzioni is an AI researcher and former Head of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the research institute launched by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. With a strong family background in computer science, Etzioni has founded numerous tech companies, one of which he sold to Microsoft for $115 million. Etzioni built a reputation for coining the term "machine reading,” which is one of the pillars of large language models such as ChatGPT. He is now a Technical Director at the AI2 Incubator, which invests in AI startups, and recently met with President Joe Biden in June to discuss the opportunities and risks of emerging AI technologies.
8 - Philipp Gerbert
Being the Director of appliedAI at Munich-based technology company UnternehmerTUM, and having been Senior Partner at BCG before that, Gerbert certainly feels at home when talking about the opportunities AI can offer the business world and has delivered a TEDTalk on the subject. A physicist by training, Philipp is also a passionate climate change advocate and is known for sending an email to BCG’s 1,500 worldwide partners asking them to urgently address climate change, after which BCG made a commitment to achieving net zero climate impact by 2030.
9 - Dr Fei-Fei Li
With over 20 years of experience in AI, Dr. Fei-Fei Li is the co-director of Stanford University's Human-Centered AI Institute. Previously she was a vice president at Google and served as chief scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud. Her research has included AI systems for healthcare delivery, and she is the inventor of ImageNet and the ImageNet Challenge, a critical large-scale dataset and benchmarking effort that has enabled incredible advances in computer vision in the past decade. In addition to her technical contributions, she is a national leading voice for advocating diversity and accessibility in the AI industry.
10 - Erik J. Larson
Larson is the tech entrepreneur and computer scientist behind The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do. He isn't afraid of sharing his bold opinions and has also written for The Atlantic, The Hedgehog Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Wired. Establishing two DARPA-funded startups, the most recent being a company that provides influence rankings for colleges and universities using an AI algorithm can also be added to his list of achievements.
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