"One of the covers for the Time issue is a painting by Jason Seiler that repurposes the iconic 1932 photograph Lunch atop a Skyscraper (whose photographer remains anonymous). The original photo shows a group of ironworkers jauntily eating lunch on a steel beam during the construction of Rockefeller Center, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are 850 feet above the ground."
"Whether intentionally or not, the cover highlights many of the reasons AI has become a polarizing political issue. Like AI itself, Time has elevated the ultrarich at the expense of the working class, who are displaced and erased. The cover also thwarts creativity by mindlessly aping an earlier work of art, another shared trait with AI. Time's enthusiasm for AI is widely shared by American elites (including, perhaps most pertinently, the magazine's owner, tech billionaire Marc Benioff)."
Time named “the architects of AI” as its 2025 Person of the Year and used a Jason Seiler cover that repurposes the 1932 Lunch atop a Skyscraper photograph. The Seiler image replaces ironworkers with Silicon Valley billionaires, elevating the ultrarich while erasing displaced working-class people. The cover’s mimicry of earlier art echoes critiques of AI’s unoriginal creativity. AI investment has created a bifurcated U.S. economy in 2025, with AI-tied sectors booming and most other sectors stagnating. Silicon Valley elites have allied with the GOP and corporate Democrats, while Democratic leaders follow industry money rather than voter demands for tougher oversight.
Read at The Nation
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