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

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Time magazine announced the “architects of artificial intelligence,” the technology that has crept into the lives of many people around the world in 2025, as its person of the year on Thursday.

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The publication shared images of its cover including one that featured tech and business leaders such as Elon Musk, leader of electric carmaker Tesla and aerospace company SpaceX, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sitting on an iron beam high above the New York City skyline similar to the “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photograph from the 1930s.

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In another, the giant letters “AI” containing computer and other technology components are surrounded by scaffolding as workers appear to assemble the structure.

“For delivering the age of thinking machines, for wowing and worrying humanity, for transforming the present and transcending the possible, the Architects of AI are TIME‘s 2025 Person of the Year,” the magazine said on social media.

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Artificial intelligence is the technology that enables machines to perform tasks based on data and algorithms, allowing it to recognize patterns and make decisions or predictions.

Accompanying the cover is an in-depth feature of the tech bosses leading the AI charge and how it will change the world in the coming years.

“Every industry needs it, every company uses it, and every nation needs to build it,” Jensen Huang, president and CEO of computer chip maker NVIDIA, told the publication. “This is the single most impactful technology of our time.”

Other titans of the AI industry identified on the cover include OpenAI boss Sam Altman, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Lisa Su, DeepMind Technologies leader Demis Hassabis, artificial intelligence researcher and Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei, and Chinese-American computer scientist Fei-Fei Li.

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Sam Jacobs, editor in chief of the magazine, said 2025 saw massive amounts of money pledged and spent to ramp up the technology and build data centres in the U.S.

“This was the year when artificial intelligence’s full potential roared into view, and when it became clear that there will be no turning back or opting out,” he wrote, explaining why the leaders of the AI industry were chosen.

“Whatever the question was, AI was the answer. We saw it accelerate medical research and productivity, and seem to make the impossible possible. It was hard to read or watch anything without being confronted with news about the rapid advancement of a technology and the people driving it.”

However, Jacobs also brought up how disruptive AI would be in people’s lives.

“No business leader could talk about the future without invoking the impact of this technological revolution,” he wrote. “No parent or teacher could ignore how their teenager or student was using it.”

In addition, AI requires massive amounts of energy to run data centres while the industry’s biggest players are among the most wealthiest on the planet.

“AI companies are now lashed to the global economy tighter than ever,” Jacobs wrote. “It is a gamble of epic proportions, and fears of an economic bubble have grown.”

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