Every December, TIME Magazine names a Person of the Year – someone who has had essentially the most impact on the news and the world, for higher or worse. Last yr, TIME made its decision President Donald Trump for the second time. It was like that the yr before Taylor Swiftwho many claimed saved the economy from recession together with her Eras Tour. In 1938 the magazine selected Adolf Hitler.
This yr, TIME decided to present its award not only to at least one person, but to a gaggle of individuals: the so-called “Architects of AI” consisting of the CEOs who’re shaping the worldwide AI race from the USA. AI is on everyone's lips and represents hope for a small minority and economic fears for a majority, per current Edelman datathese traces.
“For many years, humanity has been preparing for the rise of pondering machines,” the article says. “Leaders working to develop the technology, including Sam Altman and Elon Musk, warned that pursuing its powers may lead to unexpected disasters (…). This yr, the controversy over tips on how to use AI responsibly gave technique to a sprint to deploy it as quickly as possible.”
Based on considered one of TIME's two covers, a few of those people look like Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Tesla's Elon Musk, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, AMD's Lisa Su, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, and World Labs' Fei-Fei Li – all individuals who competed “alongside and against one another.”
TIME writes that through their billion-dollar bets on “considered one of the most important physical infrastructure projects ever,” these individuals have reshaped government policy, increased geopolitical competition and spurred the adoption of AI.
This is the story of how AI has modified our world in 2025 in latest, exciting and sometimes frightening ways. It's the story, like Huang and others Tech titans have taken the helm of history, developing technologies and making decisions which can be changing the knowledge landscape, the climate and our livelihoods… Since the arrival of nuclear weapons, AI has proven to be arguably essentially the most consequential tool in great power competition.
TIME only announced the news on Thursday morning, but images of the quilt were leaked on prediction market Polymarket on Wednesday evening.
