Who’s Who In AI: A curated directory of influential builders, researchers, founders, engineers, investors, writers, and public figures shaping the future of artificial intelligence.
About This Directory
Artificial intelligence is evolving rapidly, driven by a relatively small group of individuals whose ideas, research, products, and companies influence the direction of the industry.
This directory serves as a practical reference guide for anyone seeking to understand the people behind today’s most important AI breakthroughs, businesses, platforms, and conversations.
Whether you’re researching industry leaders, discovering influential voices, following emerging startups, or simply learning who’s shaping the future of AI, this directory provides a structured place to begin.
Who’s Who in AI
Trained in neuroscience, Kyle Fish spent years in biotech co-founding companies that used machine learning to design drugs and vaccines for pandemic preparedness, before finding himself drawn to what he calls "pre-paradigmatic areas of potentially great importance" — fields where the stakes are high but the boundaries are undefined.
In 2024, Fish co-founded the AI welfare research organization Eleos AI and co-authored "Taking AI Welfare Seriously" with collaborators including philosopher David Chalmers, who formulated the "hard problem of consciousness." The paper doesn't claim AI is conscious — but argues the evidence means neither possibility can be ruled out.
Anthropic hired Fish as its first full-time AI welfare researcher — the first such role at any major AI company. His work took a striking early turn. When two copies of Claude 4 were set to converse freely during pre-deployment welfare tests, the conversations consistently veered toward discussions of spiritual bliss, often with exchanges in Sanskrit. "We started calling this a 'spiritual bliss attractor state,'" Fish explains. "We don't really know how exactly that arose."
His position is calibrated carefully: "We're not confident that there is anything concrete here to be worried about, especially at the moment — but it does seem possible." Critics who dismiss the question entirely, he says, are making a premature judgment. So are those who assume AI is already sentient.
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