The top ‘AI for Business’ influencers you need to follow

The need for Artificial Intelligence within businesses is becoming far more apparent. As companies become more data-driven, they want to ensure they extract all possible value and insights from their data.

Whether the objective is to gain or maintain a competitive edge, improve customer experience, reduce costs, or increase productivity, automation and AI has the power to transform businesses, making it the buzzword within the business world.

AI has dominated the technology and business news in recent months, with daily news about on-going projects, developments and breakthroughs, as well as the ethics and privacy concerns and questions. AI has us talking. But whose voice should we be listening to and why?

After years of involvement in the data optimization space, we have built a list of the top ‘AI in Business’ influencers and thought-leaders that the Calligo team pays the most attention to – and who we think you should be listening to and why. Take a look below and follow our chosen influencers in AI to discover the latest news and trends and hear their fascinating insights.

1. Dr Fei-Fei Li
Dr Fei-Fei Li is a professor in the Computer Science department at Stanford University and is also the Co-Director of the Stanford Human-Central AI institute and Stanford Vision and Learning Lab. In 2017, she took a sabbatical from Stanford and worked as Chief Scientist of AI/ML for Google Cloud. Returning to the university in late 2018, Dr Li researches machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and cognitive and computational neuroscience. With hundreds of papers published, and often providing keynotes at various academic or influential conferences, Dr Li is a major advocate for using AI to benefit humanity (read the Wired article here) and is definitely worthy of a follow.

2. Sandra Wachter
Sandra Wachter is an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow in Law and Ethics of AI, Big Data, and robotics as well as Internet Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. Sandra specializes in technology, data protection and data privacy law. Sandra also featured in our Top Privacy Influencers list, but as her fascinating research focuses on the legal and ethical implications of AI we’ve also included her here in our Top AI for Business list. We particularly enjoyed her recent and thought-provoking paper on “Affinity Profiling and Discrimination by Association in Online Behavioural Advertising” which talks about the way the machine learning used advertising can lead to discrimination.

3. Andrew Ng
Andrew Ng is the Co-Chairman and Co-Founder of Coursera, and is the Founder of deeplearning.ai and Landing AI, as well as an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University. His career has been dedicated to discovering the power of machine learning and sharing it with his students and the broader AI community. He founded and led the “Google Brain” project which developed massive-scale deep learning algorithms. His research and publications can be found here. Andrew keeps his followers updated with his courses “AI for Everyone” and the latest developments in the industry.

4. Devika Thapar
Devika was Chief of Staff for IBM Watson Financial Services and is now a Partner at Wilbe, a VC and PE firm specialising in supporting technical founders develop their prototypes into commercial offerings – many of which involve AI. Her social feed and commentary showcase the latest examples of practical applications of ground-breaking technology, ranging from robotics, wearables and green tech to the widespread uses of various types of AI.

5. Tamara McCleary
A B2B social media marketing expert and influencer, Tamara McCleary is the CEO of Thulium, a business that specialises in data-driven social media strategies using artificial intelligence to develop improved customer journeys and relationships. She regularly presents her work at events providing inspiring insights into her findings from her customers’ successes. Often sharing the latest news and thought-provoking articles about AI and machine learning, Tamara’s social feeds are engaging and educational.

6. Ronald van Loon
Ronald van Loon is the director of Adversitement, which helps data-driven companies create business value from their data. Based in the Netherlands, Ronald is also an advisory board member for Simplilearn, which provides online courses cybersecurity, cloud computing, digital marketing and data science. Often posting about AI, machine learning, robotics and data privacy, Ron keeps his followers up-to-date with the latest developments. You can find his articles on LinkedIn here.

7. Nathan Benaich
As the founder of LondonAI and Air Street Capital, Nathan Benaich is an advocate for using AI within businesses. Often talking about applied machine learning and AI, either at his own highly valued and anticipated events or at other dedicated AI & ML conferences, he shares his views and insights on interesting topics, as well as sharing / retweeting articles of interest to keep his followers updated.

8. Hugo Larochelle
Hugo Larochelle is a Google Brain researcher and an Adjunct Professor at Sherbrooke University in Canada. Hugo’s research focusses on machine learning and the development of complex algorithms that will extract the fullest possible value from data. He is particularly interested in deep neural networks and artificial intelligence problems such as computer vision and natural language processing. Previously a research scientist at Twitter, Hugo has spent a considerable amount of time researching machine learning; he was a part of the Machine Learning Group at the University of Toronto. He regularly keeps his twitter feed updated with the latest in AI and ML.

9. Yann LeCun
Yan LeCun was a recipient of the Turing Nobel prize of Computer Science in 2018 alongside colleagues Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton. Together they developed the founding concepts of neural networking for computers. A professor of computer, neural and data science and electrical and computer engineering at the New York University, Yann is also VP and Chief AI Scientist at Facebook.