Two Korean women named influential AI leaders

On Aug. 28 local time, U.S. news magazine Time announced its list of the “100 Most Influential People in Artificial Intelligence in 2025,” which included two Korean women.

The honorees are Professor Choi Ye-jin of Stanford University and Joanne Chang, head of Model Behavior at OpenAI. They were listed alongside Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA; Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI; and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla.

Time selected 100 individuals who have had a significant impact in the AI field this year and organized them into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Pioneers, and Visionaries. Among them, Professor Choi and Joanne Chang were chosen in the Visionaries category.

Professor Choi graduated from the Department of Computer Engineering at Seoul National University and earned her doctorate from Cornell University. Since January, she has been working at Stanford University’s Human-Centered AI Institute (HAI). She is an authority in natural language processing, which uses computers to analyze language. In 2022, she was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, often referred to as the “genius grant.” Time noted, “Professor Choi has become a researcher focused on the human outcomes of AI,” adding that she joined HAI to explore small language models, which are emerging as an alternative to large language models dominated by a few major corporations.

Joanne Chang previously worked as a product manager at Dropbox and Google before joining OpenAI in December 2021. She currently oversees AI model behavior and policy. Time stated, “Chang considers it her mission to help users achieve their goals through AI.”


이지윤 기자 asap@donga.com