How powerful AI i.e. Artificial Intelligence is can be understood from the fact that people are asking it every small and big thing. Hours’ work is being done in seconds. ‘India AI Impact Summit 2026’ is going on in the national capital of the country in which representatives of many countries have arrived. Apart from PM Narendra Modi and Mukesh Ambani, leaders like Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Open AI’s Sam Altman attended the summit. But the question is who were those who laid the foundation of AI and due to whose initiative this technology is creating a stir all over the world.
Many stalwarts showed a different path to take Artificial Intelligence to the world. If he had not been there, Artificial Intelligence would not have achieved this position today. Know who they are.
John McCarthy: Coined the term Artificial Intelligence
John McCarthy is considered the early founder and father of Artificial Intelligence. He coined the term Artificial Intelligence in 1956. He proposed the term AI in the Dartmouth Conference, from this conference AI started as a new field. He created LISP language for AI research, which is still used in AI and research today.
John McCarthy.
He played an important role in developing the technology of simultaneous use of computers by many people. It was because of his contribution that he received the Turing Award, the highest honor in computer science. His dream was to give AI human-like thinking.
Geoffrey Hinton.
Geoffrey Hinton: Father of Dean Learning, also explains the dangers of AI
Geoffrey Hinton is known as “the father of deep learning. Hinton worked for decades on artificial neural networks and demonstrated that computers can learn like the human brain. The development of backpropagation techniques advanced the capabilities of machine learning. This laid the foundation for modern AI systems. He joined Google in 2013 and worked to advance AI research. However, in 2023, he left Google Left and started speaking openly on the dangers of AI.
Yan Li-kun.
Yan Li-kun: Created technology that makes face recognition easier
Yan is one of those AI scientists who played a big role in advancing deeplearning. Yan of France developed CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) in the 1980-90s. This technique is used in image recognition. Today this same technology is used in face recognition, medical imaging and self-driving cars. He created an early CNN model called LeNet, which banks used to identify digits written on checks. This was the practical success of deep learning.
Alan Turing.
Alan Turing: Created a test to test human thinking in a machine
Britain’s Alan Turing is considered the father of modern computer science. In 1936, he gave the theory of an imaginary machine, which is called Turing Machine. In 1950 he proposed a test, which was called the Turing test. He said that if a machine talks like a human and a human does not understand the difference, then it can be considered intelligent. Presently models like ChatGPT are inspired by this idea. The Turing Award, the biggest award in computer science, was established in his honour.
Andrew Ng.
Andrew Ng: Strengthened speech recognition system
Taking AI education to the world, he took it forward as co-founder of Coursera and founder of DeepLearning.ai. Their online courses have educated millions of people globally. His research improved the speech recognition system.
Also read: America or China, who is the biggest doyen of AI, at what position is India?