Why we built ML Heroes, and what we believe about preserving the history of AI.
AI is moving fast — faster than perhaps any technology in human history. New models appear monthly, benchmarks are broken weekly, and the public conversation is dominated by the latest product releases and market valuations.
But somewhere in all that noise, we risk forgetting the people who made it possible. The researchers who spent decades in the wilderness, defending unpopular ideas against skeptical institutions. The mathematicians who formalized thinking. The engineers who built the first nets by hand.
ML Heroes exists to remember them.
We believe that understanding where AI came from is essential to understanding where it's going. The conceptual breakthroughs of the 1940s through the 2010s weren't inevitable — they were the result of individual courage, intellectual stubbornness, and extraordinary insight.
We believe that heroes deserve names. Not just "the team at Google Brain" or "DeepMind researchers" — but Geoffrey, Yann, Yoshua, Alan, and the many others whose specific contributions shaped the world we live in.
Our heroes are selected based on the lasting impact of their contributions to the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence. We prioritize:
We aim to represent the full span of AI history, from Turing's 1936 computability paper to the deep learning revolution and beyond.
We cite dates, papers, and affiliations carefully. When we're uncertain, we say so.
AI history shouldn't require a PhD to appreciate. We write for curious humans, not just practitioners.
We actively seek out researchers from diverse backgrounds, countries, and eras who are underrepresented.