Altman, Musk, and Zuckerberg Named Person(s) of the Year by Time Magazine, as 'Architects of AI'

"Time Magazine, for what it's worth these days in terms of cultural relevance, has named the 'Architects of AI' as its Person of the Year for 2025, and these multiple persons include Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, and Mark Zuckerberg. ChatGPT was released to the public a full three years ago as of last month. But Time Magazine is declaring 2025 the year of AI, saying that the "architects" of the AI boom are the most influential figures of the year."

"But hey, Time is kind of a fading brand, a former weekly news magazine that became biweekly in 2020, mostly focused on web content that someone is reading somewhere, with rapidly dwindling print circulation. "Person of the Year is a powerful way to focus the world's attention on the people that shape our lives," says Time's Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs in an editorial. "And this year, no one had a greater impact than the individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI.""

"The cover of the annual issue is actually two covers this year, as seen below. On the right, ironically, is a non-AI-generated image that is nontheless fictional. It's a painting by Jason Seiler, modeled after the iconic 1932 photograph "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper," depicting Zuckerberg, Musk, Huang, Altman, along with Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Demis Hassabis of DeepMind Technologies, Lisa Su of Advanced Micro Devices, and Fei-Fei Li of Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute."

The 'Architects of AI' designation lists key technology leaders including Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Dario Amodei, Demis Hassabis, Lisa Su, and Fei-Fei Li. ChatGPT reached three years since public release. 2025 saw AI's accelerating influence become broadly visible and created a sense that opting out is no longer feasible. The recognition came amid commentary about legacy media's declining cultural relevance. The annual cover used a Jason Seiler painting modeled on the 1932 "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" photograph to depict industry figures. Most pictured leaders did not comment, and attention centered on company actions and technological implications, both positive and negative.

Read at sfist.com