NEW YORK — The “Architects of AI” were named Time magazine’s person of the year for 2025 on Thursday.
The magazine cited 2025 as the year when the potential of artificial intelligence “roared into view” with no turning back.
“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,” Time said in a social media post.
The magazine was deliberate in selecting people – the “individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI” – rather than the technology itself, though there would have been some precedent for that.
“We’ve named not just individuals but also groups, more women than our founders could have imagined (though still not enough), and, on rare occasions, a concept: the endangered earth, in 1988, or the personal computer, in 1982,” wrote Sam Jacobs, the editor-in-chief, in an explanation of the choice. “The drama surrounding the selection of the PC over Apple’s Steve Jobs later became the stuff of books and a movie.”
It made sense for Time to anoint AI because 2025 was the year that it shifted from “a novel technology explored by early adopters to one where a critical mass of consumers see it as part of their mainstream lives,” Thomas Husson, principal analyst at research firm Forrester, said by email.
AI was a leading contender for the top slot, according to prediction markets, along with tech CEOs Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Sam Altman of OpenAI. Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope whose election this year followed the death of Pope Francis, was also considered a contender, with President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani topping lists as well.
Trump was named the 2024 person of the year by the magazine after his winning his second bid for the White House, succeeding Taylor Swift, who was the 2023 person of the year.
The magazine’s selection dates from 1927, when its editors have picked the person they say most shaped headlines over the previous 12 months.
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