--- --- Aug 27, 2025 # David Ha Co-founder and CEO, Sakana AI by [Harry Booth](https://time.com/author/harry-booth/) ## Harry Booth Booth is a reporter at TIME.  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Courtesy Photo) In March, AI Scientist, a system for scientific discovery developed by Japanese unicorn Sakana AI, achieved something unprecedented: its research became the first AI-conducted and written paper to be accepted by peer reviewers at a premier machine learning conference. While the paper was the only one of Sakana AI’s three submissions that was accepted—and the company doesn't claim its AI can produce groundbreaking scholarship yet—for co-founder and CEO David Ha and his team, the milestone [indicated](https://sakana.ai/ai-scientist-first-publication/) “very promising early signs of progress” towards a new era of science. For decades, technologists have pondered the concept of an _intelligence explosion_—the moment AI might kickstart a runaway cycle of self-improvement, potentially vaulting past human intellect towards unprecedented abilities: curing disease, unlocking limitless energy, even taking us to the stars. While several AI firms are racing to cross this threshold, Sakana AI is banking on applying nature-inspired concepts, like evolution and collective intelligence, to create more efficient systems. In May, the company [announced](https://sakana.ai/mufg-bank/) it had brokered a multi-year partnership developing solutions for MUFG, one of Japan’s largest banks. But lighting the fuse on runaway intelligence begs the question: how could such a system, if possible, remain aligned with human intent? Sakana AI has already glimpsed just how difficult it is firsthand: in February, it retracted its claim of a hundred-fold programming acceleration after X—formerly Twitter—users pointed out its AI hadn't actually achieved it, but had instead exploited a software bug to “cheat” an evaluation. Sakana AI “[deeply](https://x.com/SakanaAILabs/status/1892992938013270019)” apologized for the incident, stating it has since implemented more robust tests. “We expect code-optimization systems, such as ours, will continue to face these challenges,” [it](https://sakana.ai/ai-cuda-engineer/#limitations-and-bloopers) added. In more recent efforts to create a self-improving system, Sakana AI has [introduced](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.22954) safety precautions, like making all code modifications in an isolated and time-limited programming environment. David Ha: The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2025 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305851/david-ha/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305851/david-ha/"},"headline":"David Ha","datePublished":"2025-08-27T20:00:48.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T11:54:43.423Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305851/david-ha/","keywords":["Tech","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades","TIME100 AI 2025"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf444ac74a8b2b550/6998c960e1ba00399398ddc5/David-Ha2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Harry Booth","jobTitle":"Booth is a reporter at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/harry-booth/"}],"creator":"Harry Booth","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf444ac74a8b2b550/6998c960e1ba00399398ddc5/David-Ha2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305851/david-ha/","name":"David Ha"}}]}] ```