The architects of AI – NBC Los Angeles

This year artificial intelligence stopped being all about the future and roared into the present.

Time announced exclusively on TODAY Dec. 11 that it has recognized AI’s seismic impact by naming the “Architects of AI” as its 2025 Person of the Year. The recognition reflects how the technology seemingly became inescapable this year in just about any aspect of American life, from its impact on education to fears of mass industry disruption.

“This is the year we feel like the people who were designing, imagining and building artificial intelligence stopped debating about how to create this technology and started racing to deploy it, and there are enormous consequences for society,” Time Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs told Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin on TODAY.

In its cover story, Time recognized the people who are building, designing and shaping AI, including the big names evangelizing for the technology and those behind the scenes responsible for its creation. The magazine also examined the tension between those looking to push AI forward and the many everyday people who have fears about AI’s potentially widespread harmful effects.

“This reminds me of the Gilded Age,” Jacobs said. “I think never before since then has so much power been concentrated in so few individuals, and we know what happened then — amazing progress, but also incredible inequality.”

TIME’s Person of the Year, chosen by the magazine’s editors every year since 1927, is representative of the influence the person has had on the news within the past year.

The magazine also examined the tension between those looking to push AI forward and the many everyday people who have fears about AI’s potentially widespread harmful effects.

“Every industry needs it, every company uses it, and every nation needs to build it,” Nvidia’s Jensen Huang told Time. “This is the single most impactful technology of our time.”

There are two different Time covers this year, both illustrated and featuring prominent tech and AI leaders. Time creative director D.W. Pine explained that the two artists “each created an image that speaks to the duality AI has produced — man vs. machine.”

Time’s Person of the Year — which is not an award of honor, but an observance of a figure who had the most influence on the events of the year, for better or for worse — has previously recognized aspects of the tech revolution. In 1982, the magazine dubbed “The Computer” its Person of the Year, or more aptly, Machine of the Year, marking the first time an inanimate object was recognized. The award represented how personal computers began to find their way into millions of American homes. Then in 2006, Time named “You” as Person of the Year as the World Wide Web accelerated connection around the globe and content creators began to rise.

The “Architects of AI” follow Time’s 2024 Person of the Year, President Donald Trump, who also plays a sizable role in the AI conversation. The day after his inauguration in January, Trump and tech luminaries like Open AI’s Sam Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison announced the Stargate Project at the White House. With the project, they pledged up to $500 billion to build AI data centers around the country. Funders and technology partners of the newly created company include some of AI’s biggest names — SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia and Microsoft.

With Time’s first cover for 2025 Person of the Year, digital painter Jason Seiler nods to the famous “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” photograph from 1932, this time depicting the following tech leaders:

• 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
• Fei-Fei Li, Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute; World Labs

With its second cover, illustrator and graphics animator Peter Crowther creates a structure covered in scaffolding, with the following figures pictured within:

• Jensen Huang, Nvidia
• Elon Musk, xAI
• Dario Amodei, Anthropic
• Lisa Su, AMD
• Mark Zuckerberg, Meta
• Demis Hassabis, DeepMind Technologies
• Fei-Fei Li, Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute; World Labs
• Sam Altman, OpenAI

Time has named a Person of the Year every year since 1927, from historic world leaders to cultural figures. In 2023, Taylor Swift became the first Person of the Year to be recognized for her success in the arts.

This isn’t the first time that a group of people has been named Person of the Year. In 2018, “The Guardians” earned the distinction. It recognized journalists who faced murder or persecution for their reporting, including the late Jamal Kashoggi and Rappler editor Maria Ressa. A year earlier, Time spotlighted “The Silence Breakers,” the women who came forward to share stories of sexual abuse and harassment as part of the #MeToo movement.

Time has also previously designated prominent technology leaders as Person of the Year, including Tesla’s Elon Musk in 2021 and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg in 2010.

Time’s 2025 Person of the Year issue is now live on Time.com. Physical copies will be available Dec. 19 on newsstands and on The Magazine Shop. 

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