Time magazine names ‘Architects of AI’ as its person of the year for 2025

By MIKE CATALINI The Architects of AI were named Time s person of the year Thursday with the magazine citing as when the prospective of artificial intelligence roared into view with no turning back Related Articles James Patterson gives checks to booksellers Star Wars and Indiana Jones rarities are in Lawrence Kasdan s university archive One Direction opener Camryn Magness killed in electric scooter accident Sharon Osbourne reveals Ozzy s last words to her Jeff Garcia Jimmy Neutron voice actor and comedian dies at For delivering the age of thinking machines for wowing and worrying humanity for transforming the present and transcending the doable the Architects of AI are TIME s Person of the Year Time stated in a social media post The magazine was deliberate in selecting people the individuals who imagined designed and built AI rather than the mechanism itself though there would have been specific precedent for that We ve named not just individuals but also groups more women than our founders could have imagined though still not enough and on rare occasions a concept the endangered Earth in or the personal computer in wrote Sam Jacobs the editor-in-chief in an explanation of the choice The drama surrounding the selection of the PC over Apple s Steve Jobs later became the stuff of books and a movie One of the cover images resembling the Lunch Atop a Skyscraper photograph from the s shows eight tech leaders sitting on the beam Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg AMD CEO Lisa Su Tesla CEO Elon Musk Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang OpenAI CEO Sam Altman the CEO of Google s DeepMind division Demis Hassabis Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li who launched her own startup World Labs last year Another cover image shows scaffolding surrounding the giant letters AI made to look like computer componentry Five of the eight people selected Musk Zuckerberg Huang Altman and Su are already billionaires with a collective fortune of billion based on the latest estimates compiled by Forbes magazine Much of the wealth has been accumulated during the past three years of AI fever It made sense for Time to anoint AI because was the year that it shifted from a novel innovation explored by early adopters to one where a critical mass of consumers see it as part of their mainstream lives Thomas Husson principal analyst at research firm Forrester commented by email TIME CEO Jessica Sibley is interviewed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange adjacent to TIME s Person of the Year cover Thursday Dec AP Photo Richard Drew The magazine noted AI company CEOs attendance at President Donald Trump s inauguration this year at the Capitol as a herald for the prominence of the sector This was the year when artificial intelligence s full prospective roared into view and when it became clear that there will be no turning back or opting out Jacobs wrote Certain experts expressed caution over the AI boom and the race to develop increasingly powerful systems Leading AI companies are working feverishly to replace humans in every facet of life and they re not being shy about it reported Anthony Aguirre executive director of the nonprofit Future of Life Institute which works on AI safety issues The impact on our society could be catastrophic if there are no guardrails protecting what s human and most of significant to us AI was a leading contender for the top slot according to prediction markets along with Huang and Altman Pope Leo XIV the first American pope whose ballot this year followed the death of Pope Francis was also considered a contender with Trump Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani topping lists as well After winning his second bid for the White House Trump was named s person of the year by the magazine succeeding Taylor Swift who was the person of the year TIME CEO Jessica Sibley second from right joined by OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane second left rings the New York Stock Exchange opening bell for TIME s Person of the Year Thursday Dec AP Photo Richard Drew The magazine was bought by Marc Benioff in Benioff one of the co-founders of cloud-computing firm Salesforce has called AI likely the the bulk critical technological wave of his lifetime He has repeatedly disclosed he doesn t get involved in Time s editorial decisions The magazine s selection dates from when its editors have picked the person they say the bulk shaped headlines over the previous months Associated Press writers Matt O Brien in Cupertino California Kelvin Chan in London and Michael Liedtke in San Ramon California contributed to this article