Alan Turing (1912–1954) was a British mathematician, logician, and computer scientist, widely considered the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. Born in London, he showed exceptional mathematical talent from an early age. Turing studied at King’s College, Cambridge, where he developed foundational ideas in computation.

During World War II, Turing played a crucial role at Bletchley Park, where he led efforts to decrypt the German Enigma machine, significantly aiding the Allied war effort. His work not only helped shorten the war but also laid the groundwork for modern computing.

After the war, Turing continued to innovate in computer science, proposing the concept of the Turing machine, a theoretical model that defines computation. Despite his monumental contributions, he faced persecution for his homosexuality, which was illegal in the UK at the time. In 1952, he was convicted and underwent chemical castration.

Turing died in 1954, and his legacy has been increasingly recognized, culminating in a posthumous royal pardon in 2013. His life and work remain pivotal in discussions about ethics in technology and the development of artificial intelligence.

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) was an American cognitive scientist, mathematician, and one of the founding figures in artificial intelligence (AI). Born in New York City, he studied mathematics at Harvard University, where he earned his bachelor's degree, before serving in World War II. After the war, he returned to Harvard for his Ph.D., where he developed a keen interest in the intersection of human cognition and machine intelligence.

In 1956, Minsky co-founded the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he conducted groundbreaking research on machine learning, robotics, and cognitive theory. He introduced the idea of "frames," a structure for organizing knowledge that influenced AI programming and human understanding.

Minsky was also known for his interdisciplinary approach, bridging philosophy, psychology, and computer science. His influential books, including "The Society of Mind," explored the complexities of human thought and intelligence.

Throughout his career, Minsky received numerous awards for his contributions to AI and education. He remained an active thinker and innovator until his death in 2016, leaving a lasting legacy in the field of artificial intelligence.

Geoffrey Hinton, born in 1947 in Wimbledon, England, is a renowned cognitive psychologist and computer scientist known as one of the pioneers of deep learning. He earned his Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh in 1978. Hinton's early work focused on neural networks, and he made significant contributions to understanding how they can be used for machine learning.

In the 1980s, he developed the backpropagation algorithm, which became essential for training neural networks. His research laid the groundwork for many modern AI applications, including speech recognition and computer vision.

Hinton has held academic positions at the University of Toronto and has been a part of Google’s AI team since 2013. His work gained widespread recognition in the 2010s, contributing to the resurgence of interest in deep learning and earning him several prestigious awards, including the Turing Award in 2018.

Hinton continues to influence the field of artificial intelligence, exploring the frontiers of machine learning and its implications for society.

Yann LeCun, born in 1960 in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, France, is a prominent computer scientist and a key figure in the field of artificial intelligence, particularly known for his work in deep learning and computer vision. He earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Pierre and Marie Curie University in 1987, where he developed convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a breakthrough in image recognition.

LeCun's research laid the foundation for many advancements in machine learning and AI. In the 1990s, he worked at AT&T Bell Labs, where he applied CNNs to handwritten digit recognition, leading to significant improvements in the field.

In 2013, LeCun joined Facebook as Chief AI Scientist while also serving as a professor at New York University. He has received numerous accolades for his contributions to AI, including the Turing Award in 2018, shared with Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, for their work on deep learning.

LeCun continues to be an influential voice in AI, advocating for its ethical development and exploring its potential to advance various fields, from healthcare to robotics.

Alex Krizhevsky, born in 1986 in Canada, is a prominent computer scientist best known for his groundbreaking work in deep learning and computer vision. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, where he studied under Geoffrey Hinton.

Krizhevsky gained widespread recognition in 2012 when he developed AlexNet, a deep convolutional neural network that won the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge. AlexNet's impressive performance demonstrated the power of deep learning for image classification and significantly advanced the field of computer vision.

Following the success of AlexNet, Krizhevsky worked at Google, where he continued to contribute to deep learning research and applications. His work has had a profound impact on the development of neural networks and has inspired countless advancements in AI.

Krizhevsky remains an influential figure in the AI community, focusing on innovative approaches to machine learning and its practical applications.

Kate Crawford is an Australian academic, researcher, and writer known for her work on the social and political implications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. She is a leading figure in the critical study of AI, focusing on issues such as data privacy, algorithmic bias, and the environmental impacts of large-scale computing.

Crawford is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and the co-founder of the AI Now Institute at New York University, which is dedicated to understanding the ethical and social dimensions of AI. She has written extensively on the intersection of technology, politics, and society, including her influential book Atlas of AI (2021), where she explores how AI systems are built on the extraction of labor, resources, and data.

Her work spans multiple fields, including media studies, sociology, and science and technology studies, making her a key voice in debates about the future of AI and its ethical implications.

Daphne Koller has had a profound impact in both academia and industry, particularly in the intersection of computer science, artificial intelligence, and biology. She earned her PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 1993, under the supervision of Joseph Halpern. After a brief stint as a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, she returned to Stanford, where she became a full professor.

Koller’s academic research is highly regarded for its focus on probabilistic graphical models, which are used to represent complex relationships in data, making her a leader in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Her work has applications in a wide range of areas, including natural language processing, computer vision, and computational biology. In computational biology, Koller has been instrumental in developing algorithms to model biological processes and disease pathways, helping to better understand gene regulation, disease progression, and more.

As a co-founder of Coursera, Koller played a pivotal role in shaping the landscape of online education. The platform partners with top universities and institutions worldwide to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) across various disciplines. Under her leadership, Coursera grew rapidly, offering thousands of courses and reaching millions of learners globally.

In 2016, Koller left Coursera to pursue other ventures in biomedical research. She became the Chief Computing Officer at Calico, an Alphabet-funded company focused on health and aging research. A few years later, she founded Insitro in 2018, a company that merges machine learning with high-throughput biology to accelerate the drug discovery process. Insitro aims to harness vast datasets and predictive models to identify new therapeutic targets and develop more effective treatments, revolutionizing the field of drug development.

Koller has received numerous honors for her contributions to science and technology, including being named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2012. In addition to the MacArthur Fellowship, she has received awards from organizations like the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI). She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Demis Hassabis is a British AI researcher, neuroscientist, and entrepreneur, best known as the co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company acquired by Google in 2015. Born on July 27, 1976, in London, Hassabis was a chess prodigy in his youth and achieved the status of master by the age of 13. He later studied computer science at the University of Cambridge, followed by a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at University College London.

Hassabis' work focuses on combining insights from neuroscience and artificial intelligence to create general-purpose AI systems. DeepMind became renowned for developing AlphaGo, the AI that defeated the world champion Go player, Lee Sedol, in 2016, marking a significant milestone in AI development. His contributions have positioned him as a leading figure in AI research and the ethical development of technology.