Ben Y. Zhao (He/Him)
Other
Ben Zhao is Neubauer Professor of Computer Science at University of Chicago. He completed his Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley (2004), and B.S. from Yale (1997). He is a long time advocate for human creatives against generative AI, and his research tools Glaze and Nightshade have been downloaded more than 13 million times across 170 countries. He is the founder and president of ETCH (Ethnical Technology and Computing for Humanity), a nonprofit focused on advocating for human creativity and ethical AI. He works with CA and IL state legislators on AI laws, and as key technical expert on multiple class action lawsuits on AI (including Bartz v Anthropic). He is an elected Fellow of the ACM, a TED/AI speaker, and a recipient of many awards, including MIT Technology Review's Young Innovators award (TR35), TIME100/AI (100 Most Influential people in AI), USENIX Internet Defense Prize, and Concept Art Association's Community Impact Award. His work has been covered by many media outlets including New York Times, CNN, NBC, ABC, BBC, MIT Tech Review, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and New Scientist.
