As if we weren’t fretting enough about artificial intelligence, TIME Magazine has crowned the “Architects of AI” as its Person of the Year — even though ChatGPT would grammatically correct that to People of the Year.
The magazine unveiled its decision overnight, citing 2025 as the year that the startling advances of the artificial intelligence industry “roared into view”.
“This was the year when artificial intelligence’s full potential roared into view, and when it became clear that there will be no turning back or opting out,” TIME’s editor Sam Jacobs wrote in the accompanying article.
One of the Person of the Year covers features tech-looking scaffolding of the letters ‘AI’, while another recreates the “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photo from the 1930s with key AI and tech figures perched on the beam.
It’s an obscenely wealthy bunch that includes Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as the top dogs behind the AI services of Google, Anthropic, and World Labs.
One wonders if AI would suddenly disappear if that beam were to accidentally fall, perhaps sparing us from the slop that has taken over our TikTok feeds this year. A girl can dream!
Perhaps preempting some backlash, TIME listed some of the “magic” achievements of AI “thinking machines”, like communicating with whales (we could’ve just asked Dory) and solving a 30-year-old math problem that was keeping absolutely zero people up at night.
TIME also cited the concerns over AI as evidence of its influence throughout 2025, from “jobs going poof” to increased misinformation and large-scale cyberattacks. If it’s sooooo influential, why can’t AI just fix all of that, huh?
In other categories, TIME named Leonardo DiCaprio its Entertainer of the Year and K-Pop Demon Hunters its Breakthrough of the Year, while basketballer A’ja Wilson scored Athlete of the Year.
Sifting through pros and cons of AI is about as confusing as a string of code, but TIME has selected head-scratching choices for its Person of the Year in the past.
Adolf Hitler got the title in 1938, while Donald Trump snagged it in 2016 and 2024.
TIME says its picks are determined based on what has influenced culture and events “for better or for worse”.
Only time will tell where AI falls on that spectrum, but ChatGPT robbing me of my beloved em dash feels like it’s pretty firmly “for the worse”.
Lead images: Instagram
The post TIME Names AI Architects Its Person Of The Year, Risks ChatGPT Correcting That Grammar appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
