Time's 2025 Person of the Year: The architects of AI

( Yahoo )

Time magazine has unveiled its 2025 Person of the Year: The architects of AI.

“2025 was the year when artificial intelligence’s full potential roared into view, and when it became clear that there will be no turning back,” Time said in its announcement on Thursday morning. “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 released two covers for its Person of the Year issue.

One, created by digital artist Jason Seiler, is a recreation of the “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photograph from 1932, replacing its ironworkers with executives at leading tech and AI companies, including Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Lisa Su (Advanced Micro Devices), Elon Musk (xAI), Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Sam Altman (Open AI), Demis Hassabis (DeepMind Technologies), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), and Fei-Fei Li (Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute). The other, by illustrator and graphics animator Peter Crowther, features the same leaders amid construction scaffolding that surrounds the letters AI.

The magazine has bestowed its Person of the Year title annually since 1927, though it was formally called Man of the Year (or Woman of the Year) until 1999.

“Person of the Year is a powerful way to focus the world’s attention on the people that shape our lives,” Time editor in chief Sam Jacobs wrote in an essay explaining the choice. “And this year, no one had a greater impact than the individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI.”

Officially, the designation is reserved for “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse,” according to the magazine. Last year’s Time Person of the Year was President Trump.

But it’s not always an actual person. And up until late Wednesday, online prediction markets had AI itself as the odds-on favorite for Time’s 2025 Person of the Year.

It would have been the third time the magazine had picked a nonhuman as its Person of the Year. In 1982, the personal computer was selected as its “Machine of the Year” for its rapid transformation of society. In 1988, Time named “Endangered Earth” as its “Planet of the Year.” In 2006, the magazine chose “You” as its Person of the Year, recognizing the emergence of digital communities and social media users as content creators.

AI has been on the minds of plenty of real people this year, and despite early optimism, many have expressed concern about potential dangers in the future.

A recent Yahoo/YouGov poll found that a majority of Americans (53%) think artificial intelligence is likely to “destroy humanity” someday. According to the survey, which was conducted in late October, 63% of Americans say it’s somewhat or very likely that AI “will become so intellectually advanced that humans won’t be able to control it anymore.”

And there appears to be a huge generation gap when it comes to interacting with AI.

According to another recent Yahoo/YouGov poll, more than 8 in 10 Gen Z adults (82%) say they have used an AI chatbot such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, Grok or Meta AI.

Only 33% of their boomer parents and grandparents, however, can say the same. And while AI chatbot use is higher among Gen X-ers (54%) and millennials (68%), it’s still nowhere near as ubiquitous as it is among so-called Zoomers.

Earlier this week, Time announced the recipients of several other year-end honors, including Athlete of the Year (WNBA star A’ja Wilson), Entertainer of the Year (Leonardo DiCaprio), CEO of the Year (YouTube Chief Executive Neal Mohan) and Breakthrough of the Year (the surprise hit film KPop Demon Hunters).