AI 20

These 20 technologists, entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, and creative thinkers are pushing artificial intelligence in unexpected directions.

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TECHNICAL STAFF MEMBER, OPENAL

THE BIGGEST STORY IN TECH IS AI'S INCREASING CAPACITY TO take on tasks once reserved for human beings. But the agents driving that change aren't machines. They're humans—inventive, ambitious, enterprising ones. Our third annual roundup of some of the field's most intriguing players includes scientists and ethicists, CEOs and investors, and Big Tech veterans and first-time founders. These 20 innovators are tackling challenges, from training tomorrow's AI models to speeding drug discovery to reimagining everyday productivity tools. Household names, they're not. Yet they're already changing our world, with much more to come.

Michelle Pokrass

LAST YEAR, OpenAI decided it had to pay more attention to its power users, the ones with a knack for discovering new uses for AI: doctors, scientists, and coders, along with companies building their own software around OpenAI's API. And so the company turned to post-training research lead Michelle Pokrass to spin up a team to better understand them. “The AI field is moving so quickly, the power-user use cases of today are really the median-user use cases a year from now, or two years from now,” Pokrass says. “It’s really important for us to stay on the leading edge and build to where capabilities are emerging, rather than just focusing on what people are using the models for now.”

Pokrass, a former software engineer for Coinbase and Clubhouse, came to OpenAI in 2022, fully sold on AI after experiencing the magic of coding tools such as GitHub Copilot. She played key roles in developing OpenAI's GPT-4.1 and GPT-5, and now she focuses on testing and tweaking models based on users who are pushing AI to its limits.