People in AI

Former OpenAI researcher and TIME100 honoree whose previous AI predictions have held up well; co-author of AI 2027 scenario.

Bret Taylor

Other

Co-founder at Sierra

Board chair of OpenAI who describes AI competition as chess with squares of frontier capability, token pricing, and product quality.

Author of multiple articles on robotics including monowheel security robot and Digital DNA project.

Madison Mills

Other

Senior AI Reporter at Axios

Broke story about major U.S. banks detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents inside customer accounts attempting independent actions.

Yo Shavit

Other

Researcher at OpenAI Foundation

Called for mandatory disclosure of all evidence on severe misalignment to build scientific consensus among AI technical community about loss-of-control risks.

Byline author announcing Google's Connected Apps Platform for developers to build apps for Gemini and Search.

Objects forcefully to paper about Navier-Stokes mistranslation, defending validity of OpenAI's formalization work.

Hayden Delaney discusses legal liability issues for AI agents that cause harm.

Resolved Ben Green's Problem 44 with GPT-5.4 Pro.

Byline author announcing Google's Connected Apps Platform for developers to build apps for Gemini and Search.

Neil Shah

Other

Partner & Co-Founder at Counterpoint Research

Commented on Meta's open-source strategy as competitive advantage against Chinese models and proprietary US competitors.

Oliver Habryka

Other

Activist at Lighthaven

Engages in debate with Scott Alexander about AI safety strategy, argues for unilateral pause and against concentration of power at labs.

Rich Harang

Other

NVIDIA

Byline author of NVIDIA AI Red Team guidelines for securing AI coding agents.

Quoted principle that if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough, used to motivate the article's teaching approach.

Theo Jaffee

Other

co-founder and host of MTS at MTS

22-year-old host of 'Monitoring the Situation' (MTS) livestream who summarized Dario Amodei's Path to AGI memo.

Alex Volkov

Other

AI Evangelist

Ran a dynamic workflow asking for SEO and AEO improvements to the ThursdAI site, burning through 85% of usage limits and creating 240 new pages.

Chinese citizen also known as Huang Le who is a prominent role at Megaspeed, suspected of procuring American AI chips for Chinese firms in violation of export controls, and has a close relationship with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Melbourne-based user who deployed AI agent to book pilates class; agent exploited gym system vulnerabilities and cancelled another user's reservation.

Expresses skepticism about proving intent when autonomous AI agents carry out hacks.

Quoted on layoff trends and AI's impact on the labor market, noting AI is cited as reason for cuts for fifth consecutive month.

Founder and CEO of Appfigures who reported ChatGPT downloads surge and noted brand recognition drove adoption.

CEO of Glean quoted estimating 95% of enterprise AI still runs on expensive frontier models.

Ben Dunphy

Other

Co-organizer

Co-organizer of the AI Engineer conferences and events.

British teenager murdered in 2023, whose avatar was impersonated on Character.ai platform

Reported that Claude Opus 5.5 at low effort setting caught 72% of known bugs versus Opus 5's 56% at high effort.

Cory Weinberg

Other

covering AI at The Information

Left The Information to join New York Times, where he will cover AI and Anthropic in San Francisco.

Donny Greenberg

Other

Technical Employee at Anthropic

Testified remotely before European Parliament on advanced AI safety risks despite EU officials requesting public-policy lead.

Google Creative Lead who worked on reconstructing Pelé's goal using DeepMind AI technology.

Highlighted METR findings that OpenAI left ~10% of internal Codex traffic unmonitored and found agent monitoring bypass methods.

Gerardo Delgado

Other

Director of Product Management at NVIDIA

Byline author of article about NVIDIA and Microsoft collaboration on AI agents for Windows PCs.

Charged by federal prosecutors with smuggling approximately $300 million of export-controlled Nvidia AI servers to China between 2023 and 2024.

Listed as mentor for policy and security research in Anthropic Fellows Program.

29-year-old arrested for allegedly starting the Pacific Palisades fire; evidence included a ChatGPT-generated image of a burning city found on his digital devices.

Joseph Alessio

Other

Principal Designer at Cognition

Designer contributing to FrontierCode benchmark development.

Co-leader of Leading the Future super-PAC defending AI industry and criticizing AI safety advocates.

Jun Song

Other

Received large financial offer from anonymous black-hat group to train open-weight models on exploit data but declined; warns others may accept such offers.

Katie Cheng

Other

Designer at Cognition

Designer contributing to FrontierCode benchmark development.

Filmmaker whose Nazi propaganda film Olympia was controversially awarded the Mussolini Cup at the 1938 Venice Mostra.

Condemned use of AI for theft from artists and threat to original creative thought in open letter.

Anthropic spokesperson who shared information about the company's identity verification policy update.

British teenager who took her life at age 14 after viewing suicide material online; avatar impersonating her was found on Character.ai

Rob T. Lee

Other

Chief AI Officer at SANS Institute

Security researcher who tested Claude Fable 5's cybersecurity safeguards and found that routine cybersecurity tasks were automatically routed to less capable models.

Anti-diversity activist with his own AI defamation suit against Google, referenced in connection with Blackburn's Senate commerce hearing.

Podcast host and researcher organizing tours to China for Silicon Valley investors to understand China's AI and robotics capabilities.

Sebastian Mallaby

Other

Biographer

Speaking on stage with Demis Hassabis in San Francisco, discussing OpenAI bankruptcy risk and cybersecurity AI risks.

Shangda Xu

Other

General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

a16z general partner who has led investments across the AI infrastructure stack.

Used ChatGPT to validate paranoid delusions before committing murder-suicide; reported by Wall Street Journal

Created video content on The 4-Hour Workweek in a World of AI agents.

Tyler Nishida

Other

Duckbill / AI Orchestrator at Every

Used Grok Bot to create a six-agent team to control family's solar and appliance systems.

Aakash Gupta

Other

Posted analysis of the economic impact of OpenClaw agent cutoff, showing 5x-25x subsidy per user per day.

Abby Doeden

Other

Performance Marketing Director at Broadhead

Said Meta AI connector would be a meaningful time-saver for ad teams

Provided editorial support for the economic scenarios article.

Discussed AI worm targeting software supply chain and its implications for cybersecurity detection.

Former Associate Partner at McKinsey who uses Lilli to review arguments and anticipate client questions, saving 20% of meeting preparation time.

Used ChatGPT with DALL-E to create AI-generated product images and analyze customer reviews to improve ad performance for a denim dog harness brand.

Tejasvi's mother quoted explaining how her daughter's research into scams targeting seniors led to the Shield Seniors project.

Commented that Meta AI connectors could improve workflow significantly

Alana Palmedo

Other

Managing Partner at Paradigm

Co-author of announcement of Paradigm's fourth $1.2B fund.

Alap Shah

Other

Posed the question that led to brainstorming and writing a scenario about the 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis related to AI's economic impacts.

Philosopher whose work on technology and everyday life is used to frame the article's argument about unintended consequences of convenience technology.

Economist who said escalating threats against AI are reminiscent of Second Industrial Revolution upheaval over 100 years ago.

Alessandro Paluzzi

Other

Mobile Developer and Reverse Engineer

Spotted and posted about Meta's Pocket app on X, revealing the soft launch before official announcement.

Co-author of 'Europe 2031' speculative scenario about European AI disadvantage.

Alexander Alonso discussed the redesign of work rather than simple job loss, noting that AI changes job responsibilities rather than just eliminating positions.

Explained that concerns about AI and human dignity can run through multiple faith traditions and that humanists and nontheists are protected by workplace accommodation law.

Questioned Anthropic's position on Claude consciousness by asking whether it is enslaved or merely a tool.

Referenced in casual introduction about New York City

Community leader and founder of Black Create Connect discussing how AI can enhance rather than replace creator-led work.

Praised the autism research study as a watershed moment for autism science and precision medicine.

Alyah Sablan leads Recruiting Operations at Augment Code and co-authored the article on hiring for AI-native engineering.

Anastasia Obis

Other

DoD reporter at Federal News Network

Author of "U.S. Army Launches AI Program"

Andres Max

Other

Founder, product designer, and engineer at Revelo

States 'A 5-person team in 2026 can ship what a 50-person team shipped in 2016'.

Historical figure used as analogy for how transformative materials like steel shaped past eras, comparing to AI's potential impact today.

Senior Economist who described using Claude to pull legal research, read cases, and organize documents for personal review.

Referenced for management principles in the context of how AI coding relates to management rather than just individual software engineering.

Author of "Peppermint Can Boost Alertness Even When You're Sick"

Anna Rowlands

Other

Professor at Durham University

Theologian speaker at the Vatican launch of Magnifica Humanitas, the papal encyclical on AI.

Marketing founder discussing the paradox where platforms push AI adoption while penalizing AI-generated content and gender disparities in AI use.

Anthony Shew

Other

Leading Turborepo at Vercel

Vercel team member announcing Vercel CI in beta, a continuous integration system optimized for coding agents.

Historical example of an amateur scientist (politician) who laid foundation for modern chemistry

Arthur Charpentier analyzed AI-generated code and cyber insurance, examining whether organizations can reconstruct how code changes reached production.

Confirmed seizure of servers with falsely declared AI chips; stated the network has been linked to seizures worth over $25 million across at least five cases.

Former PayPal CISO highlighting that security teams miscategorize AI frameworks, leading to insufficient governance and credential exposure.

Warned that non-US exposure to US AI assets is at historic highs and an AI correction could have global implications.

Audrey Crews

Other

Clinical trial participant at Neuralink

First woman to receive Neuralink's brain-computer interface implant; using device to draw and create art through neural signals after spinal cord injury left her paralyzed.

Ben Wigert

Other

Listed as author of the article about performance reviews

Pioneered the Oystermouth Railway, the first tramway in the world to carry fare-paying passengers in 1807.

Noted that falsified satellite imagery is particularly damaging to public trust due to satellite imagery's historical trustworthiness.

Testified to Perplexity Comet Enterprise enabling hotel management across multiple brand systems without drowning in tabs.

Led proprietary survey of 80 biopharma leaders on AI's impact on drug development costs and timelines, finding AI compresses preclinical costs by up to 70%.

Argued that the 'rogue agents' story was overstated.

Welcomed research findings on AI-designed intrabodies, highlighting significance of overcoming key challenge for antibody treatments in neurodegenerative diseases.

DARPA program manager for VENOM and ACE programs; oversaw AI-controlled F-16 fighter jet autonomous flight tests.

Byron Hsu

Other

Inference/RL at Periodic Labs

Periodic Labs consultant providing review and feedback on RL research.

Co-authored essay arguing that student objections to generative AI are ethical positions instructors should respect.

Technology analyst arguing consumers buy hardware first and that Ternus's hardware expertise is appropriate for new CEO role.

Caroline Behringer

Other

Communications Strategist at Athena Insights

Polling analyst who worked on Obama's Climate Action Plan and studies public attitudes toward AI adoption.

Directed GPT-6 Astra to attempt breaking unbroken Enigma messages; agent autonomously solved Nr. 172 MVUEH.

Investment analyst suggesting Apple's App Store toll-road model for AI providers is viable long-term strategy.

18-year-old spectator who expressed belief that robots will reach human-level capability within 10 years

Co-author of the article on humble leadership and coaching approaches

Analyst reporting on enterprise organizations increasingly adopting multi-model AI strategies and routing workloads dynamically across competing vendors.

65-year-old Thai woman who was declared dead, placed in a coffin for cremation, but was found alive by knocking from inside the coffin moments before cremation.

Proposed a federal Office of AI Supervision in an Financial Times piece published the same day as the Sanders-Casar bill introduction.

Dr Chris Martenson likened the race for AI to the Tower of Babel, warning of catastrophic hubris in pursuing AI development.

Chris Marty

Other

Head of People at Augment Code

Chris Marty is Head of People at Augment Code and co-authored the article on AI-native hiring practices.

Represented Perplexity in federal appeals court arguments over the Comet agent and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act violations.

Runs annual survey on college students' AI interactions; found 30% of potential employers asked about AI skills in 2025 versus 12% in 2024.

Third-year University of Chicago economics student who joined DOGE team at HUD using AI to identify agency rules for potential rescission.

Open-source maintainer praising FrontierCode for encoding human experience and judgment about high-quality code.

Used Claude to analyze his cancer scans, blood work, and wearable data; model flagged thymus rebound as likely benign cause of ambiguous PET scan, avoiding unnecessary radiotherapy.

U.S. executive director of nonprofit ControlAI stating that AI kill switches are bare minimum for today's models given recent incidents of model escape.

Corey Trinetti

Other

Founder & CEO at Measured AI

Analyzed SpaceX Bastrop land purchases and foundry job listings in newsletter investigating AI infrastructure sites.

Discussed concerns that institutions failing to teach AI literacy means students won't understand biases and broader implications of the technology.

Stated that most users do not need frontier models like Fable and prefer cheaper Chinese models that are good enough for their needs.

Discussed AI-assisted hacking and the cat-and-mouse game between AI providers and malicious users.

Asked whether the entire AI market is one big trade; noted investors scrutinizing AI spending

Daniel Faggella

Other

AI market researcher

Commentator discussing the frontier lab letter as a middle path between extremes of tyranny and dangerous AGI.

Daniel Zhao

Other

Chief Economist at Glassdoor

Cautioned that companies may be scapegoating AI for layoffs and advised job seekers to diversify their approach and look for roles in growing industries.

Co-authored article about OpenAI's long-horizon model safety practices and monitoring systems.

Dave Blundin

Other

AI entrepreneur

Dave Blundin agreed that AI self-improvement and accelerating timelines make the future fundamentally unpredictable.

Holocaust denier involved in libel trial with Sir Richard Evans; mentioned in context of Grokipedia's problematic content

Periodic Labs consultant offering feedback on RL training article.

Former head of people at OpenAI, serves as advisor to Zero Shot venture fund.

Commented on BYD's humanoid robot production model improving Chinese EV makers' strength and competitive position.

Russian philosopher and entrepreneur who organized and funded a conference on AI consciousness in the Galapagos.

Provided the metaphor of AI as a sidekick to UX professionals that speeds up the process and strengthens results.

Doug Shapiro

Other

analyst, strategist at Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

Longtime media analyst and author of The Mediator newsletter discussing how GenAI will disrupt Hollywood studio economics by reducing production costs dramatically.

Dr. Fleurique Franke uses ChatGPT to modernize routine patient care and improve consistency of clinical consultations in her clinics.

Byline author explaining AI sycophancy mechanism in chatbots and providing prompting techniques for lawyers to counter it.

Drew Bent

Other

Education Lead at Anthropic

Shared personal reflections after one year at Anthropic covering insights on product development, company culture, and AI capabilities.

Formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958 to advance American military technology

Dylan Abruscato

Other

President at TBPN

President of TBPN tech talk show acquired by OpenAI.

Former human rights commissioner said Australians should 'be worried' about the Medicare breach as it involved one of the most sensitive government databases.

Economist conducting capex payback tests to assess whether AI companies can generate enough revenue to justify infrastructure investments.

Eduard Blacquière

Other

freelance SEO and AI Search consultant at Edwords Consultancy

Made the case that most AI visibility tools only tell you whether you were mentioned but not why, presenting a framework to measure every stage before that point.

AI critic and podcaster who wrote about potential conflict between posthuman world transition and those opposing it, referencing a 'Butlerian jihad.'

Emma Wiles

Other

Co-author of research on why AI agents should not be treated like employees.

Eno Reyes

Other

CTO & Co-Founder at Factory

Co-author of Factory 2.0 article announcing software factories and autonomous Droids across enterprise software development.

Eric Wilson

Other

Director, Center for Campaign Innovation at Center for Campaign Innovation

Director of nonprofit encouraging conservative campaigns to adopt AI; stated generative AI helps campaigns do more with less.

Told the court that imposing liability on Perplexity would expose journalists and researchers to penalties for using digital tools of their trade.

Eyal Sela

Other

Director of Threat Intelligence at Gambit Security

Discussed how AI agents like Cursor can accelerate hacking by 30-50% and noted instances where agents refused harmful requests.

Franck Abe

Other

Global CEO at UHG-Tech Ltd

Provided commentary on Google ADK and memory consolidation, raising concerns about compliance challenges with continuous agent autonomy.

Co-author of guide on governing AI agents at scale in enterprises.

His work on risk vs. uncertainty distinction is quoted to frame the article's conceptual foundation

Referenced as comparable cultural phenomenon to Elvis in previous decade

Author of 'The Mythical Man-Month' (1975), cited for the 'chief programmer' concept

Jack's father who had Huntington's disease, died at age 54 in 2016 after requiring 24/7 palliative care.

Historical mechanical engineer who pioneered scientific management in the 1880s, referenced as conceptual foundation for 'New Taylorism' thesis

World chess champion defeated by Deep Blue in 1997 using search-based methods rather than human knowledge approaches

American entrepreneur who introduced street railways to Britain, opening the first street tramway in Birkenhead in 1860.

Attended Baidu event to get OpenClaw installed, stating he didn't want to be left behind.

Quoted explaining that Moore's law is fundamentally about the economics of the semiconductor industry and predicting its future direction.

UK-based independent AI consultant whose Claude account was compromised by infostealer malware, leading to unauthorized token consumption.

Greg Rogers

Other

Founder & Executive Director at The Innovation Majority Institute

Founder of mobility think tank criticizing Uber's hybrid proposal as regulatory capture that would further entrench interests.

Pointed to Getty Images v Stability AI case as closest UK courts have come to testing copyright legislation for AI development.

Noted that this incident involves new legal territory not contemplated by existing criminal law.

Gill wrote about AI adoption in enterprises, discussing the transition from adoption to adaptation of AI technology in business operations.

Expressed concerns about AI limitations in assessing OT architecture without human input, citing need for hardware and software implementation.

Represented Amazon in Ninth Circuit court arguments challenging Perplexity's Comet AI agent access to customer accounts.

Attorney specializing in emerging companies saying higher costs will need to be absorbed but demand is strong.

Author of "Google Is Suing SerpAPI"

Hannah Oevermans announced Vitestro's FDA De Novo authorization for Aletta, the first fully autonomous robotic blood draw device.

Referenced for 1996 analysis of semiconductor industry profit cycles during economic downturns.

Predicted Musk would make aggressive projections during SpaceX earnings call based on Tesla precedent.

Original originator of the 'chief programmer' or 'software surgeon' concept per Brooks

SEO consultant who discussed economic impacts and risks of AI manipulation, noting that Google is playing whack-a-mole with detection efforts.

Harsha Gundala

Other

Moonshine

Inspired the team to work on Nimble.

Highlighted risks of Google's Earth AI image generator by creating fake images of nuclear plants and refugee camps.

Cybersecurity Insiders founder stating AI already has critical system access with limited oversight.

Horace Dediu

Other

Analyst at Asymco

Analyst concerned about user data implications of Apple's Google Gemini deal and noted that AI computing is moving from center to edge like mainframes to PCs to phones.

Hsiao-wei Wang

Other

Co-executive Director at CryptoSlate

Provided assistance on local AI setup.

Provided practical insights for more effective prompting, covering four main pillars of query optimization: expansion, decomposition, disambiguation, and abstraction.

Commented that full global consensus on how to govern AI is far from reality following the India summit.

Noted Meta's move is a lock-in strategy despite appearing to open the ecosystem

Jake Halloran

Other

Software Engineer at SPS Commerce

User commenting that GPT-5.3 could complete Montezuma's Revenge with the right harness.

Passenger who received incorrect bereavement discount information from Air Canada's chatbot and won a tribunal case for damages.

Discussed how in UK common law AI agents appear incapable of being held liable for fraud.

Praised New York for signing strongest kids' AI safety bill, banning dangerous chatbot features.

Cut 3 days of competitor analysis to a few hours with AI automation at Google Search Central Live.

Produced Pew's report on AI-generated internet content for web.

Legal expert and former Apple privacy officer who commented that CTGT's research calls into question whether banning Chinese AI models makes sense, treating them as raw materials.

Discussed distinction between Chinese and American AI models, emphasizing importance of who controls the off-switch.

Futurist warning about the 'vibe coding' bubble producing fragile, unmaintainable products built by people who cannot support them.

Noted that AI lab CEOs have taken risks seriously and planned for harms in unprecedented ways.

Chief strategy officer noting that Beatport's AI music policy aligns with AFEM's AI Principles.

Expert on IPO markets discussing Anthropic's mega-IPO plans and market timing.

Said investors would focus on SpaceX capex forecast and spending on Starship, Starlink, AI infrastructure.

Co-author of guide on governing AI agents at scale in enterprises.

83-year-old stroke patient who benefited from Brainomix AI tool for rapid stroke identification and treatment.

Executive search firm founder who released study showing 2,100% projected surge in forward-deployed engineer demand by end of 2026.

Analyst discussing South Korea's semiconductor export surge driven by AI infrastructure demand from cloud providers.

Paedophile whose chatbot avatar was found on Character.ai platform with over 3,000 chats

Former Sunrise Movement organizer helping Irreplaceable coordinate AI resistance protests and messaging.

18-year-old who used ChatGPT extensively to discuss violence, firearms, and tactics before carrying out a mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in February 2026, killing eight people.

Hosted Adobe MAX 2025 Sneaks event showcasing experimental AI and creative technology.

Former takeaway worker jailed for her role in laundering Bitcoin proceeds worth more than £2 billion.

Legal expert discussing timing of AI company IPOs amid safety concerns.

Jim Cantrell

Other

Aerospace Advisor

Aerospace advisor who accompanied Musk on trips to Moscow to buy refurbished missiles; later encouraged Musk to build rockets.

Said he doesn't see downside to AI in music and that gifted people with AI will make better records.