Sara Hooker ’13 named to TIME100 list of most influential people in AI
Hooker studied economics, political science/international relations, and political economy at Carleton. She is now VP of research and head of Cohere for AI.
Sara Hooker ’13 has been named to TIME’s TIME100 AI, an annual list recognizing the world’s 100 most influential people in AI. She is listed in the “Shapers” category of the list.
Hooker is the VP of research and head of Cohere for AI, a nonprofit that serves as the research arm of the enterprise AI startup Cohere. Her lab works on issues like increasing the efficiency of a given model and optimizing the quality of data used to train AI. One of its most notable projects is Aya, a set of language models and a dataset created in collaboration with over 3,000 researchers across the world to support a diversity of languages.
More than most AI researchers, TIME reports, 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,” Hooker says. “Our work is not just used in conference centers anymore. It’s used all over the world, and so this means that we have to not only have the role of researchers, but also to have an understanding of that impact.”
The full list of TIME100 AI honorees and related tributes appear in the September 16, 2024 issue of TIME, available at time.com/time100ai.