AI Cultural Canon

Understanding AI begins with recognizing and understanding both the individuals and ideas which have and continue to shape its evolution.

Yoshua Bengio

DOB: 5 March 1964

Yoshua Bengio is a Canadian computer scientist and deep learning pioneer who co-developed foundational neural network techniques and founded Mila, a major AI research institute. A 2018 Turing Award laureate, he is one of the most influential figures in modern machine learning.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Jeff Dean

DOB: 10 July 1968

Jeff Dean is an American computer scientist and Google Senior Fellow who co-founded Google Brain and helped build many of Google’s core large-scale systems, including MapReduce, TensorFlow, and advanced neural network research. He leads AI research across Google DeepMind.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Timnit Gebru

DOB: 1983

Timnit Gebru is an AI ethics researcher known for her work on algorithmic bias and fairness, co-founding Black in AI and later founding the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). She is a leading voice on the societal impacts of AI systems.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Geoffrey Hinton

DOB: 6 December 1947

Geoffrey Hinton is a British-Canadian computer scientist widely known as a pioneer of deep learning and neural networks, contributing foundational techniques such as backpropagation. A 2018 Turing Award recipient, he is often called the “Godfather of AI.”

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Jensen Huang

DOB: 17 February 1963

Jensen Huang is a Taiwanese-American entrepreneur and co-founder/CEO of NVIDIA, whose GPU hardware and CUDA platform have been central to the rise of modern AI. He is widely credited with enabling the deep learning revolution.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Yann LeCun

DOB: 8 July 1960

Yann LeCun is a French-American computer scientist and Meta’s Chief AI Scientist, known for pioneering convolutional neural networks and advancing modern computer vision. He received the 2018 Turing Award for his work in deep learning.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Fei-Fei Li

DOB: 14 July 1976

Fei-Fei Li is a Chinese-American computer scientist and Stanford professor known for founding ImageNet, a landmark dataset that catalyzed modern computer vision. She co-directs Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute and formerly served as Chief Scientist of AI at Google Cloud.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

John McCarthy

DOB: 4 September 1927

John McCarthy was an American computer scientist who coined the term “Artificial Intelligence” in 1956 and created the Lisp programming language. He co-founded both the MIT AI Lab and the Stanford AI Lab and was a foundational figure in early AI research.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Marvin Minsky

DOB: 9 August 1927

Marvin Minsky was an American cognitive scientist and co-founder of the MIT AI Laboratory, contributing to early neural networks, robotics, and foundational theories in artificial intelligence. He authored several influential books on AI and cognition.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Mira Murati

DOB: 1988

Mira Murati is an engineer and technology executive who serves as Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, helping lead the development of ChatGPT, DALL·E, and GPT-4. She is a prominent public advocate for responsible AI governance and deployment.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Elon Musk

DOB: 28 June 1971

Elon Musk is a technology entrepreneur, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and founder of xAI. A co-founder of OpenAI, he remains a prominent and sometimes controversial figure in public debates about AI safety and the future of artificial general intelligence.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Andrew Ng

DOB: 1976

Andrew Ng is a computer scientist and entrepreneur who co-founded Google Brain, led AI efforts at Baidu, and founded DeepLearning.AI. He is widely recognized for democratizing AI education through his influential online courses on Coursera.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Mustafa Suleyman

DOB: 7 August 1984

Mustafa Suleyman is a British AI entrepreneur and co-founder of DeepMind, later co-founding Inflection AI and joining Microsoft as CEO of Microsoft AI. He is known for integrating ethical considerations and applied AI into large-scale deployments.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Ilya Sutskever

DOB: 1985

Ilya Sutskever is an AI researcher and co-founder of OpenAI, where he served as Chief Scientist and helped drive major advances in large language models. Previously, he contributed to groundbreaking work in deep learning at Google Brain.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Alan Turing

DOB: 23 June 1912

Alan Turing was a British mathematician and computer scientist whose work laid the foundations of modern computing and artificial intelligence. He developed the concept of the Turing Machine and proposed the Turing Test as a measure of machine intelligence.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.

Norbert Wiener

DOB: 26 November 1894

Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician best known for founding cybernetics, a field that profoundly influenced automation, robotics, and early theories of artificial intelligence. His work shaped the study of systems, control, and feedback loops in machines.

Bio summarized from the English Wikipedia using ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, 15 Nov 2025.