“For ushering in the age of thinking machines, for surprising and alarming humanity, for transforming the present and surpassing the possible, the architects of AI are TIME’s 2025 Persons of the Year,” the magazine wrote on Thursday.
“We saw how it could accelerate medical research, productivity and make the impossible possible,” it continued.
While a highly anticipated announcement in American media circles, “Person of the Year” does not always mean that the person or people in question have been a force for good. This list of 1927 also includes dictators like Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.
Indeed, the magazine noted several negative aspects of AI, including its excessive environmental impact and its use in place of human labor and art.
One of the cover images reimagines a famous photo of construction workers eating lunch on a half-built skyscraper. Pictured instead are Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, AMD CEO Lisa Su, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google’s DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and World Labs’ AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li.
Topping the speculators’ list were AI and its progenitors, while Pope Leo XIV and New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani were also considered top contenders.
Edited by: Shawn Sinico