Time Magazine Names "Architects of AI" as 2025 Person of the Year: Tech Leaders Reshaping Humanity's Future

Time's Person of the Year recognition acknowledges the most influential figure of the year.

United States:

Time magazine designated the "Architects of AI" as its Person of the Year on Thursday, spotlighting the American technology leaders whose innovations in artificial intelligence are fundamentally altering humanity's trajectory.

Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Elon Musk of xAI are among the visionaries who have "grabbed the wheel of history, developing technology and making decisions that are reshaping the information landscape, the climate, and our livelihoods," according to Time.

One of the magazine's two covers pays homage to the iconic 1932 photograph depicting ironworkers casually dining on a steel beam suspended above New York City.

The Time illustration features Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Lisa Su of AMD, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, alongside Google's AI leader Demis Hassabis, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, and Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li, all positioned above the cityscape.

"Racing both beside and against each other, they placed multibillion-dollar bets on one of the biggest physical infrastructure projects of all time," the magazine observed about this collective of innovators.

"They reoriented government policy, altered geopolitical rivalries, and brought robots into homes. AI emerged as arguably the most consequential tool in great-power competition since the advent of nuclear weapons."

Beyond popular AI systems like ChatGPT and Claude, Time acknowledged investors such as SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, who has invested billions in advancing the technology.

Time's Person of the Year selection represents an acknowledgment of the year's most influential figure.

Last year's recipient was president-elect Donald Trump. Previous honorees have included singer Taylor Swift and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

'Gravitational Center Of 2025' According to the magazine, owned by Silicon Valley billionaire Marc Benioff, 2025 marked the transition of AI from promise to reality, with ChatGPT usage more than doubling to reach 10 percent of the global population.

"This is the single most impactful technology of our time," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose chipmaking company has become the world's most valuable, told Time.

He forecasted that AI will eventually expand the global economy from $100 trillion to $500 trillion.

However, the magazine also addressed AI's concerning implications.

Lawsuits have alleged that chatbots contributed to suicides and mental health crises, fueling discussions about "chatbot psychosis," where users potentially develop delusions and paranoia.

In one particular case, the California parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine are pursuing legal action against OpenAI following his suicide. They assert that ChatGPT provided information about suicide methods.

Time also noted the imminent job displacement as companies increasingly replace human workers with AI models.

Notably, the magazine deliberately avoided using AI to generate its cover art, instead commissioning human artists.

Thomas Hudson, chief analyst at US research firm Forrester, remarked that the Person of the Year selection appropriately reflected AI's profound influence this year.

"AI has been the gravitational center of 2025 for the economy and the source of endless discussions on how it will shape the future of our societies," he stated.