--- description: Find out why Benjamin Rosman made TIME’s list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence. title: TIME100 AI 2025: Benjamin Rosman image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1d24f948024373b5/6998c9209fbc7ce3e1d9a584/Benjamin-Rosman.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Aug 26, 2025 # Benjamin Rosman Founding director, MIND Institute by [Tharin Pillay](/author/tharin-pillay/) ## Tharin Pillay Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME.  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Courtesy Photo) Benjamin Rosman is tired of being asked about the “African angle” on artificial intelligence. That’s not because he has nothing to say—a professor of computer science and applied maths at Wits University in South Africa, Rosman co-founded both the [Deep Learning Indaba](https://deeplearningindaba.com/2025/ "undefined"), an annual gathering for Africa’s AI community, and [Lelapa AI](https://lelapa.ai/ "undefined"), a company developing AI for African languages—but because he rejects the assumption that Africa can only contribute to the field by building applications or contributing data. “It’s like, screw you,” he says. “What’s the unique American angle on AI?” Last November, Rosman launched the Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery ([MIND](https://www.wits.ac.za/mind/ "undefined")) Institute at Wits, an interdisciplinary research hub that gathers 34 fellows from across the university to address fundamental questions in both artificial and natural intelligence. While fellows include AI researchers, there are also “neuroanatomists and philosophers and policy people,” says Rosman. MIND runs workshops and sometimes facilitates funding for those fellows in pursuit of moonshot projects ranging from elephant communication to studies on how culture mediates robot-human interaction. “We need to crazy-idea our way out of problems,” says Rosman. Supported by funding from IBM and Google, the institute aims to expand its ambit to encompass scholars from other universities in Africa and abroad. The goal, Rosman says, is to make MIND—and by extension Africa—an intellectual hub in its own right. He hopes MIND will spawn similar institutes across the continent. “It’s not that there’s anything wrong with stuff developed elsewhere,” he says. “But if Africa’s not involved in the conversation, we’ve got problems.” Benjamin Rosman: The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2025 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305865/benjamin-rosman/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305865/benjamin-rosman/"},"headline":"Benjamin Rosman","datePublished":"2025-08-26T20:03:14.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T11:54:44.271Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305865/benjamin-rosman/","keywords":["Tech","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades","TIME100 AI 2025"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1d24f948024373b5/6998c9209fbc7ce3e1d9a584/Benjamin-Rosman.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tharin Pillay","jobTitle":"Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/tharin-pillay/"}],"creator":"Tharin Pillay","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1d24f948024373b5/6998c9209fbc7ce3e1d9a584/Benjamin-Rosman.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-2025/7305865/benjamin-rosman/","name":"Benjamin Rosman"}}]}] ```