Tharin Pillay

Tharin Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME, interested in how AI and other digital technologies are changing us. He is currently supported by the Tarbell Fellowship.

Recent Articles

Demis Hassabis

When Demis Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010, he had a 20-year plan culminating in the creation of artificial general intelligence (AGI), an AI system that can do practically any cognitive task a human can. 14...

By Tharin Pillay

C.C. Wei

Dr. C.C. Wei is in charge of the world’s largest contract semiconductor manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), having served its CEO since 2018, and its Chairman since June 2024. TSMC, whose clients include Apple,...

By Tharin Pillay

Sara Hooker

More than most AI researchers, Sara Hooker is aware of the social implications of her work. Despite her warm disposition, she is often “grumpy” about the field. “It stops me in my tracks,” she says....

By Tharin Pillay

Amandeep Singh Gill

Amandeep Singh Gill is at the forefront of global AI governance. As the United Nations Secretary General’s Envoy on Technology, he coordinates digital cooperation among member states, industry, and civil society, as well as within...

By Tharin Pillay

Ashwini Vaishnaw

India—the world’s fifth largest economy—is trying to become a major player in the world of AI. The country’s electronics and information technology minister, Aishwini Vaishnaw, leads its efforts. While the country has yet to create...

By Tharin Pillay

Sarah Cardell

The pace of recent AI advancements has taken many regulators by surprise. The United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), currently led by Sarah Cardell, was not one of them. In 2019, the CMA set...

By Tharin Pillay

Kristen DiCerbo

Despite persistent hype, educational technology (“EdTech”) has so far failed to live up to its promise of improving and democratizing education. Kristen DiCerbo, Khan Academy’s Chief Learning Officer, is cautiously optimistic that AI will be...

By Tharin Pillay

Andrew Yao

Andrew Yao, widely-considered to be one of the most influential computer scientists of his generation, has left an indelible imprint on China’s approach to AI. A Turing Award winner and the Dean of the Institute...

By Tharin Pillay

Dwarkesh Patel

Over the past four years, Dwarkesh Patel, a 23-year-old Bay Area resident, has built one of the most deeply-researched podcasts on artificial intelligence (among other subjects). Patel has quickly become known for his thorough and...

By Tharin Pillay

Katja Grace

Thanks to Katja Grace, co-founder of the research organization AI Impacts, we have some sense of how AI researchers are thinking about the future. The short answer: while views vary widely, they all agree on...

By Tharin Pillay

Daniel Kokotajlo

In 2022, Daniel Kokotajlo joined OpenAI as a governance researcher. Two years later, he made headlines by resigning and refusing to sign a non-disparagement clause that would have cost him approximately $2 million in equity....

By Tharin Pillay

Yoshua Bengio

Yoshua Bengio, one of the most-cited researchers in AI, is deeply concerned about the dangers that future artificial intelligence systems may pose. A longtime professor at the University of Montreal and founding director of the...

By Tharin Pillay

Piotr Dabkowski

With just a few minutes of an audio sample, ElevenLabs can clone your voice. The unicorn start-up, co-founded by two Polish friends, Piotr Dabkowski and Mateusz Staniszewski, has developed a model that can generate a...

By Tharin Pillay

Palmer Luckey

With his defense technology startup Anduril Industries, Palmer Luckey is betting that the future of military technology lies in advances in software engineering and computing. And with a valuation of $14 billion, investors in the...

By Tharin Pillay

Zack Dvey-Aharon

More than half of people living with diabetes are at risk of losing their eyesight due to complications from a disease called diabetic retinopathy. That’s about 500 million people globally, and 40 million in the...

By Tharin Pillay

Gina Raimondo

Gina Raimondo, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, wants to “out-innovate the world” on AI. At the same time, she wants the U.S. to develop “standards, guidelines and best practices to allow [for its] safe and...

By Tharin Pillay

Elizabeth Kelly

Last November, at the world’s first AI Safety Summit, both the British and American governments announced the formation of AI safety institutes, intended to test these cutting-edge systems for potential risks. Appointed to lead America’s...

By Tharin Pillay

Albert Gu

Albert Gu, assistant professor of machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University, is working on giving artificial intelligence something akin to memory. Currently, every time you ask models like ChatGPT a question, it considers every prior...

By Tharin Pillay

Andrej Karpathy

Andrej Karpathy’s name is strewn across the history of modern AI. In 2015, he was one of the founding members of OpenAI, working as a research scientist. In 2017, he was personally hired by Elon...

By Tharin Pillay

How GoDaddy’s CEO Strives to Be Better Every Day

Aman Bhutani discusses what drives him, how the company is using AI, and its response to recent cybersecurity challenges.

By Tharin Pillay
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