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AI titans including Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Fei-Fei Li are depicted on Time’s ‘Person of the Year’ cover. Images: Peter Crowther, Jason Seiler \/ Time<\/p>\n
A group of mostly billionaires has collectively secured the title of Time Magazine\u2019s Person of the Year for 2025, with the publication\u2019s latest annual list honouring \u2018The Architects of AI\u2019 as generative AI (genAI) giants shed any pretence of risk aversion and put pedal to metal.<\/p>\n
Tech titans like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, X and xAI CEO Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and \u2018godmother of AI\u2019 professor Fei-Fei Li, Time\u2019s writers observed<\/a>, have been honoured because they \u201cgrabbed the wheel of history.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis year, the debate about how to wield AI responsibly gave way to a sprint to deploy it as fast as possible,\u201d they said, and \u201cplaced multibillion-dollar bets on one of the biggest physical infrastructure projects of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n During 2025 AI \u201cwrote millions of lines of code, aided lab scientists, generated viral songs, and spurred companies to re-examine their strategies or risk obsolescence \u2013 but researchers have [also] found that AIs can scheme, deceive, or blackmail,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n These threats<\/a> have been a constant counterpoint to the widely touted productivity benefits of AI, particularly as initially mooted ethical and operational shackles have been cast aside in the name of growth \u2013 and that, Time has noted, is both good and bad.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was the year when AI\u2019s full potential roared into view, and when it became clear that there will be no turning back or opting out,\u201d it said, noting that \u201cwhatever the question was, AI was the answer\u2026. We saw it seem to make the impossible possible.\u201d<\/p>\n A controversial choice, but not for the first Time<\/p>\n Time\u2019s view of AI\u2019s impact is clear in the design of its two covers \u2013 one a stylised \u2018AI\u2019 and the other a tribute to the classic 1932 photo Lunch Atop a Skyscraper<\/a>, whose subjects evoke the industrial might that made the US a world economic leader.<\/p>\n The leaders honoured by this year\u2019s award are driving an equally significant revolution, Time notes, with hundreds of billions invested already and McKinsey expecting $7.8 trillion ($US5.2 trillion) to be invested by 2030.<\/p>\n Those investments are reshaping economic markets and global infrastructure, with data centres turbo-charging construction markets and tech giants scrambling to find enough power to run facilities that are expanding to become the size of cities<\/a>.<\/p>\n Indeed, Goldman Sachs has predicted<\/a> data centres will use 8 per cent of US power by 2030 \u2013 twice their share in 2023 \u2013 and AI capital investments have kept the US economy out of recession, although some fear the risks of \u201ccircular financing\u201d that\u2019s paying for it.<\/p>\n Yet AI\u2019s ever-expanding bubble of investment and hype could go very wrong with drastic consequences, warn critics who have labelled Time\u2019s choice a snub of murdered firebrand Charlie Kirk, and a bow to AI masters set to obsolete millions of jobs.<\/p>\n Celebrating the lack of regulation<\/p>\n The Time award is often controversial, but the choice to award the title to AI visionaries this year was driven by the technology\u2019s rapid escalation, as putative controls on AI\u2019s functioning and moral ground give way to unfettered populist investment.<\/p>\n Walking this line has been a focus for governments in Australia \u2013 where the recently launched National AI Plan<\/a> opted to ignore expert advice for restraint and instead let AI companies set the pace \u2013 and elsewhere, with the EU\u2019s AI Act forcing<\/a> AI transparency.<\/p>\n This battle is also playing out in the US, where 38 states have passed their own legislation to apply standards relevant for their diverse populations.<\/p>\n The risk of creating a conflicting patchwork of AI regulations recently drove US President Donald Trump to sign an executive order<\/a> banning \u201conerous\u201d US state laws that, he warned<\/a>, threatened the country\u2019s ability to dominate the AI race against China and others.<\/p>\n \u201cWe remain in the earliest days of this technological revolution and are in a race with adversaries for supremacy within it,\u201d the order says, adding that \u201cto win, US AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cExcessive State regulation thwarts this imperative.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nAlso pictured in Time’s illustration are AMD’s Lisa Su (second from left), Google’s Demis Hassabis (third from right), and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei (second from right). Image: Jason Seiler \/ Time<\/p>\n