A structured reference to the individuals shaping artificial intelligence across research, industry, governance, ethics, and public discourse. Curated as a resource for professionals navigating the AI landscape. For more see the full list at AI People.

Global and Emerging Voices

Moustapha Cissé | African AI, Capacity Building | Senegal Founded Google AI Ghana and leads efforts building AI research capacity in Africa. His work developing local AI communities and research infrastructure expands who participates in shaping AI's future. Key works: Google AI Ghana, African ML community building

Shakir Mohamed | Probabilistic ML, Community Building | South Africa DeepMind researcher and Deep Learning Indaba co-founder. His technical work on probabilistic models complements community building that strengthens African AI research. Key works: Deep Learning Indaba, probabilistic ML research

Vukosi Marivate | African Language NLP | South Africa Leads the Data Science for Social Impact group and co-founded Masakhane, building NLP resources for African languages. His work ensures AI language technology serves more of the world's population. Key works: Masakhane, African language NLP

Kathleen Siminyu | Language Technology, Community | Kenya Language data specialist working on African language AI at Mozilla. Her work building datasets and communities for underrepresented languages expands AI's linguistic coverage. Key works: Masakhane, African language datasets

Sara Hooker | Efficiency, Research Access | United States Leads Cohere For AI, which provides compute access to researchers who lack resources. Her technical work on model efficiency and her community building efforts both address barriers to AI research participation. Key works: Cohere For AI, efficiency research

Sasha Luccioni | AI Environmental Impact | France Leads climate research at Hugging Face, measuring and working to reduce AI's carbon footprint. Her work quantifying AI's environmental costs provides data for more sustainable development. Key works: AI carbon footprint research, climate AI

Yi Zeng | AI Ethics, Chinese Perspective | China Leads AI ethics research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, providing Chinese academic perspectives on AI governance. His work bridges Chinese and international AI ethics discussions. Key works: AI ethics research, China AI governance

B. Ravindran | Indian AI Research | India Leads AI research at IIT Madras and works on building Indian AI research capacity. His work ensures India's large technical community contributes to and benefits from AI advances. Key works: IIT Madras AI, Indian AI capacity building

Pushmeet Kohli | Research Leadership | United Kingdom VP of Research at Google DeepMind whose work spans machine learning and scientific applications. Leads teams working on AI for science and foundational ML research. Key works: DeepMind research leadership, ML applications to science

How to Use This Directory

For research: Each entry includes key works and affiliations for deeper investigation.

For event planning: Filter by geographic base, domain, or public engagement experience.

For understanding the field: The categorisation reveals how different communities, from technical researchers, ethicists, policymakers, industry leaders all shape AI development.

For identifying perspectives: Note whose voices are included and whose might be missing from any particular AI conversation.

This directory is maintained as a resource for the AI age. Last updated: 2026.

Curated by Rahim Hirji for thesuperskills.com.

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