NEW YORK – Time magazine named the “Architects of AI” as its Person of the Year on Thursday, highlighting the US tech titans whose work on cutting-edge artificial intelligence is transforming humanity.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk are among the innovators who have “grabbed the wheel of history, developing technology and making decisions that are reshaping the information landscape, the climate, and our livelihoods,” Time wrote.
The magazine’s cover pays homage to the famous 1932 photograph of ironworkers casually eating lunch on a steel beam above New York City. In Time’s illustration, sitting astride the city are Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, AMD chief Lisa Su, Musk, Huang, Altman, Google’s AI boss Demis Hassabis, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li.
“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 said of the group. “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.”
AI shifts from promise to reality
According to the magazine, which is owned by Silicon Valley billionaire Marc Benioff, 2025 was the year AI shifted from promise to reality. ChatGPT usage more than doubled this year, reaching 10 percent of the world’s population.
“This is the single most impactful technology of our time,” Huang, CEO of chipmaker Nvidia — the most valuable company in the world — told Time. He predicted that AI will eventually grow the global economy from $100 trillion to $500 trillion.
Alongside popular AI models like ChatGPT and Claude, Time credited investors like SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, who has invested billions of dollars into the technology.
Time’s Person of the Year selection acknowledges the year’s most influential figure. The title last year went to president-elect Donald Trump. Previous recipients have included singer Taylor Swift and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.
Darker side of AI revolution
But the magazine also pointed to AI’s troubling aspects. Lawsuits have alleged that chatbots contributed to suicides and mental health crises, sparking debates about “chatbot psychosis,” where users may develop delusions and paranoia.
In one case, California parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine are suing OpenAI after he took his own life. They claim that ChatGPT provided information about suicide methods.
Time also noted looming job displacement as more companies race to replace workers with AI models.
Despite the AI theme, the magazine notably steered away from using artificial intelligence to generate its cover art, opting instead for human artists.
Thomas Hudson, chief analyst at U.S. research firm Forrester, said the Person of the Year choice rightly reflected AI’s heavy influence this year.
“AI has been the gravitational centre of 2025 for the economy and the source of endless discussions on how it will shape the future of our societies,” he said in a statement.
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